Beyond arctic and alpine: the influence of winter climate on temperate ecosystems.

Winter climate is expected to change under future climate scenarios, yet the majority of winter ecology research is focused in cold-climate ecosystems. In many temperate systems, it is unclear how winter climate relates to biotic responses during the growing season. The objective of this study was to examine how winter weather relates to plant and animal communities in a variety of terrestrial ecosystems ranging from warm deserts to alpine tundra. Specifically, we examined the association between winter weather and plant phenology, plant species richness, consumer abundance, and consumer richness in 11 terrestrial ecosystems associated with the U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. To varying degrees, winter precipitation and temperature were correlated with all biotic response variables. Bud break was tightly aligned with end of winter temperatures. For half the sites, winter weather was a better predictor of plant species richness than growing season weather. Warmer winters were correlated with lower consumer abundances in both temperate and alpine systems. Our findings suggest winter weather may have a strong influence on biotic activity during the growing season and should be considered in future studies investigating the effects of climate change on both alpine and temperate systems.

From missing source to missing sink: long-term changes in the nitrogen budget of a northern hardwood forest.

Biogeochemical monitoring for 45 years at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire has revealed multiple surprises, seeming contradictions, and unresolved questions in the long-term record of ecosystem nitrogen dynamics. From 1965 to 1977, more N was accumulating in living biomass than was deposited from the atmosphere; the "missing" N source was attributed to biological fixation. Since 1992, biomass accumulation has been negligible or even negative, and streamwater export of dissolved inorganic N has decreased from ~4 to ~1 kg of N ha(-1) year(-1), despite chronically elevated atmospheric N deposition (~7 kg of N ha(-1) year(-1)) and predictions of N saturation. Here we show that the ecosystem has shifted to a net N sink, either storing or denitrifying ~8 kg of N ha(-1) year(-1). Repeated sampling over 25 years shows that the forest floor is not detectably accumulating N, but the C:N ratio is increasing. Mineral soil N has decreased nonsignificantly in recent decades, but the variability of these measurements prevents detection of a change of <700 kg of N ha(-1). Whether the excess N is accumulating in the ecosystem or lost through denitrification will be difficult to determine, but the distinction has important implications for the local ecosystem and global climate.