Staff profile

Potential feedbacks between loss of biosphere integrity and climate change

Lade, S.J., Norberg, J., Anderies, J.M.,, Beer, C. et.al.

2019 - Journal / article

Individual organisms on land and in the ocean sequester massive amounts of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans. Yet the role of ecosystems as a whole in modulating this uptake of carbon is less clear. Here, we study several different mechanisms by which climate change and ecosystems could interact. We show that climate change could cause changes in ecosystems that reduce their capacity to take up carbon, further a...

Ecosystem tipping points in an evolving world

Dakos, V., Matthews, B., Hendry, A.P., Levine, J., et.al.

2019 - Journal / article

There is growing concern over tipping points arising in ecosystems because of the crossing of environmental thresholds. Tipping points lead to abrupt and possibly irreversible shifts between alternative ecosystem states, potentially incurring high societal costs. Trait variation in populations is central to the biotic feedbacks that maintain alternative ecosystem states, as they govern the responses of populations to environme...

Scaling functional traits to ecosystem processes: Towards a mechanistic understanding in peat mosses

Mazziotta, A., Granath, G., Rydin, H., Bengtsson, F. & Norberg, J.

2018 - Journal / article

1. The role of trait trade -offs and environmental filtering in explaining the variability in functional traits and ecosystem processes has received considerable attention for vascular plants but less so for bryophytes. Thus, we do not know whether the same forces also shape the phenotypic variability of bryophytes. Here, we assess how environmental gradients and trade -offs shape functional traits and subse -quently ecosystem...

Analytically tractable climate–carbon cycle feedbacks under 21st century anthropogenic forcing

Lade, S. J., Donges, J. F., Fetzer, I., Anderies, J. M., Beer, C., Cornell, S. E., Gasser, T., Norberg, J., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., and Steffen, W.

2018 - Journal / article

Changes to climate–carbon cycle feedbacks may significantly affect the Earth system’s response to greenhouse gas emissions. These feedbacks are usually analysed from numerical output of complex and arguably opaque Earth system models. Here, we construct a stylised global climate–carbon cycle model, test its output against comprehensive Earth system models, and investigate the strengths of its climate–carbon cycle feedbacks ...