Historical changes in tree and impervious surface cover following urban renewal in a small postindustrial city.

Changes in tree cover and impervious surfaces have been observed across many cities in the United States over the past 70 years. Many municipalities are implementing tree planting programs in efforts to increase tree cover. A detailed understanding of historical changes in land cover can inform urban forest management.

Vegetation type is an important predictor of the arctic summer land surface energy budget.

Despite the importance of high-latitude surface energy budgets (SEBs) for land-climate interactions in the rapidly changing Arctic, uncertainties in their prediction persist. Here, we harmonize SEB observations across a network of vegetated and glaciated sites at circumpolar scale (1994-2021). Our variance-partitioning analysis identifies vegetation type as an important predictor for SEB-components during Arctic summer (June-August), compared to other SEB-drivers including climate, latitude and permafrost characteristics.

Temporal shifts in iso/anisohydry revealed from daily observations of plant water potential in a dominant desert shrub.

Plant species are characterized along a spectrum of isohydry to anisohydry depending on their regulation of water potential (Ψ), but the plasticity of hydraulic strategies is largely unknown. The role of environmental drivers was evaluated in the hydraulic behavior of Larrea tridentata, a drought-tolerant desert shrub that withstands a wide range of environmental conditions. With a 1.

Understory vegetation mediates permafrost active layer dynamics and carbon dioxide fluxes in open-canopy larch forests of northeastern Siberia.

Arctic ecosystems are characterized by a broad range of plant functional types that are highly heterogeneous at small (~1-2 m) spatial scales. Climatic changes can impact vegetation distribution directly, and also indirectly via impacts on disturbance regimes. Consequent changes in vegetation structure and function have implications for surface energy dynamics that may alter permafrost thermal dynamics, and are therefore of interest in the context of permafrost related climate feedbacks.

The diversity of experimental organisms in biomedical research may be influenced by biomedical funding.

Contrary to concerns of some critics, we present evidence that biomedical research is not dominated by a small handful of model organisms. An exhaustive analysis of research literature suggests that the diversity of experimental organisms in biomedical research has increased substantially since 1975. There has been a longstanding worry that organism-centric funding policies can lead to biases in experimental organism choice, and thus negatively impact the direction of research and the interpretation of results.

Seasonal stomatal behavior of a common desert shrub and the influence of plant neighbors.

Stomata simultaneously regulate plant carbon gain and water loss, and patterns of stomatal conductance (g(s)) provide insight into water use strategies. In arid systems, g(s) varies seasonally based on factors such as water availability and temperature. Moreover, the presence and species identity of neighboring plants likely affects g(s) of the focal plant by altering available soil water and microclimate conditions.