PARTNERS: Members of the U.S.-China Carbon Consortium

SUMMARY: The U.S.-China Carbon Consortium (USCCC) is a collaborative effort between American and Chinese institutions interested in studying the role of managed ecosystems in global carbon and water cycles. The overall goal is to develop a network of study sites so that data and results can be shared and synthesized at broad spatial scales in order to assess the importance of human influences on carbon and water fluxes in a changing climate. Flux towers directly and continuously measure the net ecosystem exchange of carbon dioxide and water, and researchers use an integrated ecosystem approach to explore the underlying mechanisms controlling the fluxes of dominant ecosystems in the U.S. and China. The central hypothesis is that human disturbances increase variability of carbon sequestration and the water cycle of a landscape through time and space primarily by influencing landscape structure (i.e., composition) that directly affects the underlying mechanisms. Further, researchers hypothesize that human disturbance regimes in the U.S. and China are significantly different, suggesting that models predicting carbon and water are different.

Above: Poplar plantation carbon and water flux measurements, Daxing District, Beijing, China. Click to enlarge.

EFETAC's ROLE: EFETAC researchers are contributing data and results to improve the network of carbon and water cycle study sites.

STATUS: Ongoing

PROGRESS: Four special journal issues have highlighted this collaborative work; EFETAC research hydrologist Ge Sun served as a lead editor:

Wei, X., G. Sun, J. Vose, K. Otsuki, Z. Zhang, and K. Smetterm. 2011. Forest ecohydrological processes in a changing environment (Preface). Ecohydrology 4:143-145. (PDF)

Birdsey, R.A., R. Lucas, Y. Pan, G. Sun, E.J. Gustafson, and A.H. Perera, eds. 2010. Managing landscapes at multiple scales for sustainability of ecosystem functions. Forest Ecology and Management 259(7):1213-1346. (PDF)

Sun, G., O.J. Sun, and G. Zhou. 2009. Water and carbon dynamics in selected ecosystems in China (Editorial). Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 149:1789-1790. (PDF)

Sun, G., S. Liu, Z. Zhang, and X. Wei, 2008. Forest hydrology in China: Introduction to the featured collection. Journal of American Water Resources Association. 44(5):1073-1075. (PDF)

Many additional papers and presentations have also been produced as part of this project.  

LINKS: U.S.-China Carbon Consortium

CONTACT: Ge Sun, EFETAC Research Hydrologist, gesun@fs.fed.us 919-515-9498

Updated December 2011