Carbon Sequestration

Mangrove forests have migrated inland over the past few decades at many locations along the northern Gulf coast. This expansion has been attributed to factors associated with climate change, such as increased salinity resulting from sea-level rise and longer intervals between winter freezes, which can kill cold-intolerant mangrove species.

This study will employ a space for time substitution to show long-term effects of rising sea-level and increasing salinity on vegetation community structure, primary production and decomposition. Productivity and decomposition rates will be estimated for four wetland plant community types defined by salinity zones and dominant plant species.

Sudden Marsh Dieback - SMD - has been documented for the past two decades throughout coastal areas of the United States. With these large-scale diebacks comes the loss of ecosystem functions and services. USGS scientsts use field work and greenhouse studies to investigate the factors that control the resilience and resistance of coastal salt marshes to SMD.

USGS is investigating the impact of the annual grass-fire cycle-- and restoration land treatments aimed at slowing that cycle-- on carbon storage in dryland soils.

Coastal ecosystems provide critical local and national societal benefits such as coastal protection and fish nurseries but are some of the most heavily used and threatened systems on the planet. The Mangrove Science Network is a collaboration of USGS scientists focused on working with natural resource managers to develop and conduct mangrove research.

Management partners have identified a major need to understand the short and long-term consequences of altered wildfire patterns, vegetation change, climate, and management actions for the carbon cycle. This project aims to quantify carbon storage and greenhouse gas emissions in sagebrush rangelands. Researchers will link findings to the Sagebrush Conservation Design Framework and provide...

The Mangrove Science Network is a collaboration of USGS scientists focused on working with natural resource managers to develop and conduct research whose findings will support and evaluate decisions made in mangrove management and restoration.

USGS researchers will utilize long-term soil elevation change data to help advance understanding of soil elevation dynamics and ecological transformations within coastal wetlands of the Greater Everglades.

Forests are a key component of a healthy ecosystem. Management of these resources is vital to their protection as a recreational resource as well as an environmental resource.

USGS economists and social scientists conduct economic and social science research in the context of natural resource management to deliver information used by resource managers to maximize and sustain economic and social benefits from natural resources to the American public.

Alaska is simultaneously a landscape of extremes requiring specialized adaptations by plants and animals to survive the winters and a landscape of abundance that supports breeding birds each summer from as far away as Africa. Terrestrial Alaska also supports iconic species such as caribou and muskoxen whose population dynamics, predator/prey relationships and habitat ecology are researched by USGS...

Wetlands significantly contributes to regional, national and global carbon budgets. Because prairie-pothole wetlands have 1) highly productive vegetation and 2) low rates of carbon decomposition, they are ideal systems for accumulating and storing carbon in the soil. However, because prairie-pothole wetlands are located in areas of intense agricultural activity, this important pool of stored...