Prairie restoration and carbon sequestration: difficulties quantifying C sources and sinks using a biometric approach.

We investigated carbon cycling and ecosystem characteristics among two prairie restoration treatments established in 1987 and adjacent cropland, all part of the Conservation Reserve Program in southwestern Wisconsin, USA. We hypothesized that different plant functional groups (cool-season C3 vs. warm-season C4 grasses) between the two prairie restoration treatments would lead to differences in soil and vegetation characteristics and amount of sequestered carbon, compared to the crop system.

Emissions pathways, climate change, and impacts on California.

The magnitude of future climate change depends substantially on the greenhouse gas emission pathways we choose. Here we explore the implications of the highest and lowest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emissions pathways for climate change and associated impacts in California. Based on climate projections from two state-of-the-art climate models with low and medium sensitivity (Parallel Climate Model and Hadley Centre Climate Model, version 3, respectively), we find that annual temperature increases nearly double from the lower B1 to the higher A1fi emissions scenario before 2100.