Net Ecosystem Exchange (2001)
a collection of scientific papers for Australian conditions

Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting
Helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the land through excellence in science

Dr Miko Kirschbaum of the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting coordinated a workshop during April 2001 for sixty leading Aust & NZ scientists in the NEE field to review current knowledge for our continent. It was a special gathering as it brought together a full range of experts from a variety of disciplines to consider the big question of how vegetation may contribute to, or against, global warming. The new publication from the CRC contains papers arising from the workshop that represent the latest understanding in this field of scientific interest.

Australia is, as we know, a vast continent with a variety of vegetation covering it. The challenges for all our scientists studying NEE include understanding the different processes, incorporating them into computer models and being able to run those models at the large scale of the continent. The NEE Workshop rose to that challenge and attempted to scale up from the processes operating at the small scale of patches to the scale of the continent.

Please feel free to download our entire publication or any individual chapters below:

Foreword
Contents
Workshop Agenda
Participant List

• Definitions of some ecological terms commonly used in Carbon Accounting
• Brief outline of several models used for simulating Net Ecosystem Exchange

• Radiation interception - Ying Ping Wang
• Radiation conversion - Belinda Medlyn
• Respiration - Roger Gifford
• Allocation - Craig Barton
• Mortality and stand age effects on productivity - Michael Battaglia
• Phenology, reproduction - Chris Beadle
• The impact of ecosystem water balance on NPP - Derek Eamus
• Other soil constraints (impedence, acidity, salinity, water logging) - Robert Edis
• Nutrient uptake and use in plant growth - John Evans and Everard Edwards
• Linking above and below-ground processes - Miko Kirschbaum
• Interactions between carbon dynamics and nutrient mineralisation - Peter Grace
• Temperature and moisture effects on decomposition rate - Keryn Paul
• Soil texture effects on decomposition and soil carbon storage - Jeff Baldock and Evelyn Krull
• pH, aluminium and other factors that can inhibit decomposition rates - Ram Dalal
• Charcoal and other resistant organic matter - Jan Skjemstad
• Soil disturbance (cultivation) effects on decomposition and soil carbon storage - Phil Polglase
• Litter quality and quantity - Marc Corbeels

Linking the processes together - Steve Roxburgh and Rapporteurs