Speaker: Dr. Chris Solomon, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
For most ecosystem types – from boreal forests to temperate grasslands, headwater streams to the open ocean – we have strong conceptual and empirical understanding of the typical annual patterns of gross primary production and ecosystem respiration. These patterns of ecosystem metabolism, known as “metabolic regimes”, are among the most fundamental descriptors of ecosystem function.
In this talk Dr. Solomon considers the metabolic regimes of lake ecosystems, for which synthetic analyses have not kept up with a recent explosion in available data. He develops a new conceptual model for the controls on ecosystem metabolism, and propose several hypotheses about the metabolic regimes of lakes and the ways in which they differ from those of forests, grasslands, streams, and oceans.
