Climate Change and Ecosystem Services Output Efficiency in Southern Loblolly Pine Forests.

Forests provide myriad ecosystem services that are vital to humanity. With climate change, we expect to see significant changes to forests that will alter the supply of these critical services and affect human well-being. To better understand the impacts of climate change on forest-based ecosystem services, we applied a data envelopment analysis method to assess plot-level efficiency in the provision of ecosystem services in Florida natural loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.

Sustainability of forest management under changing climatic conditions in the southern United States: adaptation strategies, economic rents and carbon sequestration.

The impacts of climate change on profitability and carbon storage in even-aged forest stands of two dominant commercial pine species, loblolly and slash pine, in the southern United States were assessed under alternative assumptions about the impact of climate change on forest productivity and catastrophic disturbance rates. Potential adaptation strategies to reduce losses from disturbance included: 1) alternative planting densities, and 2) planting slash pine instead of loblolly pine. In addition, the amount of sequestered carbon was used to develop an index of economic efficiency for carbon sequestration, which further helps rank the suitability of alternative adaptation strategies.

Effect of spatial coherence on scattering from optically inhomogeneous media.

The properties of light scattered from material systems depend on the characteristics of input optical fields. We study numerically the effect of the state of spatial coherence on the properties of scattered fields. Using a customized coupled dipole technique, we demonstrate that this influence manifests in changes of the statistics of intensities scattered at different angles.

Plastocyanin-ferredoxin oxidoreduction and endosymbiotic gene transfer.

Sequence similarities of proteins associated with plastocyanin-ferredoxin oxidoreduction (PcFdOR) activity of Photosystem I (PSI) were grouped and compared. PsaA, psaB, psaC, and petG represent genes that have been retained in the chloroplasts of both green- and red-lineage species. PsaD, psaE, psaF, and petF represent genes that have been retained in the chloroplast of red-lineage species, but have been transferred to the nuclear genome of green-lineage species.