Coral reefs are diverse ecosystems threatened by rising CO2 levels through increases in sea surface temperature and ocean acidification. This study presents a new unified model, based on experimental and observational data, that links changes in temperature and carbonate chemistry to coral health. We show that, despite the implicit complexity of the coral reef environment, our simple model can give important insights into how corals respond to changes in temperature and ocean acidification.

This was the first study to compare snail’s morphological traits under varying shallow-vent stresses using populations previously classified by protein expression profiles. Anachis snails were classified as V-South (pH 7.78-7.82) and V-Rest (pH 7.31-7.83). There was a difference in shell width : length, with vent populations being more globular. Vent Anachis snails had thinner body whorl (56%) and penultimate whorl (29%) shells than non-vent Euplica sp.

Ocean carbon flux, seafloor respiration, and seafloor carbon burial are calculated from plankton respiration. Based on this respiration, a new parameter, the heterotrophic energy production - the rate of ATP generated in seawater, is calculated, and a new concept, the nutrient retention efficiency (NRE), and its ocean variability, is developed and demonstrated. Finally, the curvature of the respiration profile is discovered to be the control - key for NRE and carbon flux.

We present a model, LM3-PPA, which simulates vegetation dynamics and biogeochemical processes by explicitly scaling from individual plants to ecosystems using the perfect plasticity approximation. It includes height-structured competition for light- and root-allocation-dependent competition for belowground resources. Because of the tractability of the PPA, the coupled LM3-PPA model is able to retain computational tractability, as well as close linkages to mathematically tractable special cases.

Four bio-profilers were deployed in the high-biomass plume downstream of the Kerguelen Plateau (KP; Southern Ocean) to examine the conditions favouring phytoplankton accumulation. Regions of very high Chla accumulation were mainly associated with surface waters from the northern KP. Light limitation seems to have a limited influence on production. A cyclonic eddy was associated with a significant export of organic matter and a subsequent dissolved inorganic carbon storage in the ocean interior.

Dynamic SOC and N stocks in the aerobic zone play a key role in the regulation of plant- and microbially mediated CO2 and CH4 fluxes in drained and cultivated fen peatlands. Their interaction with the groundwater level (GWL) strongly influenced soil C gas exchange, indicating effects of GWL-dependent N availability on C formation and transformation processes in the plant--soil system. In contrast, static SOC and N stocks showed no significant effect on C gas fluxes.

The air-sea CO2 exchange is investigated in the coastal region of the Baltic Sea and Danish inner waters. The impact of short-term variability in atmospheric CO2 on the air-sea CO2 exchange is examined, and it is found that ignoring short-term variability in the atmospheric CO2 creates a significant bias in the CO2 exchange. Atmospheric short-term variability is not always included in studies of the air-sea CO2 exchange, but based on the present study, we recommend it to be so in the future.

We provide an evaluation of the spatio-temporal dynamics of the annual C allocation to wood in French forests. Our study supports the premise that the growth of European tree species is subject to complex control processes that include both source and sink limitations. We suggest a straightforward modelling framework with which to implement these combined forest growth limitations into terrestrial biosphere models.

We probabilistically invert the CARAIB dynamic vegetation model using a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampler, considering both homoscedastic and heteroscedastic eddy covariance residual errors with variances either fixed a priori or jointly inferred with the model parameters. A model validation experiment showed that CARAIB models calibrated considering heteroscedastic residual errors result in more robust posterior parameter distributions.