Publications by authors named "E F Belshe"

Quantifying carbon fluxes into and out of coastal soils is critical to meeting greenhouse gas reduction and coastal resiliency goals. Numerous 'blue carbon' studies have generated, or benefitted from, synthetic datasets. However, the community those efforts inspired does not have a centralized, standardized database of disaggregated data used to estimate carbon stocks and fluxes.

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Tropical seagrass meadows are formed by an array of seagrass species that share the same space. Species sharing the same plot are competing for resources, namely light and inorganic nutrients, which results in the capacity of some species to preempt space from others. However, the drivers behind seagrass species competition are not completely understood.

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Article Synopsis
  • Eutrophication threatens tropical seagrass meadows, but its effects under climate change are not well understood, especially for specific species.
  • This study examined how nutrient addition during a hot summer affected seagrass from different areas in the Gulf of Aqaba, revealing that seagrass in less nutrient-rich areas (South Beach) experienced stress, while those in nutrient-rich areas (North Beach) benefited.
  • Findings suggest that the history of nutrient exposure in seagrass meadows impacts their resilience, with specific traits like biomass and leaf area serving as warning signs for nutrient stress.
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is a key foundation species in the Mediterranean providing valuable ecosystem services. However, this species is particularly vulnerable towards high coastal nutrient inputs and the rising frequency of intense summer heat waves, but their combined effect has received little attention so far. Here, we investigated the effects of nutrient addition during an unusually warm summer over a 4-month period, comparing different morphological, physiological and biochemical population metrics of seagrass meadows growing in protected areas (Ischia) with meadows already exposed to significant anthropogenic pressure (Baia - Gulf of Pozzuoli).

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Are tundra ecosystems currently a carbon source or sink? What is the future trajectory of tundra carbon fluxes in response to climate change? These questions are of global importance because of the vast quantities of organic carbon stored in permafrost soils. In this meta-analysis, we compile 40 years of CO2 flux observations from 54 studies spanning 32 sites across northern high latitudes. Using time-series analysis, we investigated if seasonal or annual CO2 fluxes have changed over time, and whether spatial differences in mean annual temperature could help explain temporal changes in CO2 flux.

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