Sarquis, A.; Sierra, C. A.: Information content in time series of litter decomposition studies and the transit time of litter in arid lands. Biogeosciences 20 (9), pp. 1759 - 1771 (2023)
Giraldo, J. A.; Valle, J. I. d.; González-Caro, S.; David, D. A.; Taylor, T.; Tobón, C.; Sierra, C. A.: Tree growth periodicity in the ever-wet tropical forest of the Americas. Journal of Ecology 111 (4), pp. 889 - 902 (2023)
Sierra, C. A.; Quetin, G. R.; Metzler, H.; Mueller, M.: A decrease in the age of respired carbon from the terrestrial biosphere and increase in the asymmetry of its distribution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London - Series A: Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences 381 (2261), 20220200 (2023)
Wells, J. M.; Crow, S. E.; Sierra, C.; Deenik, J. L.; Carlson, K. M.; Meki, M. N.; Kiniry, J.: Edaphic controls of soil organic carbon in tropical agricultural landscapes. Scientific Reports 12, 21574 (2022)
Salazar, A.; Sanchez, A.; Dukes, J. S.; Salazar, J. F.; Clerici, N.; Lasso, E.; Sanchez-Pacheco, S. J.; Rendon, A. M.; Villegas, J. C.; Sierra, C.et al.; Poveda, G.; Quesada, B.; Uribe, M. R.; Rodríguez-Buritica, S.; Ungar, P.; Pulido-Santacruz, P.; Ruiz-Morato, N.; Arias, P. A.: Peace and the environment at the crossroads: Elections in a conflict-troubled biodiversity hotspot. Environmental Science and Policy 135, pp. 77 - 85 (2022)
Sarquis, A.; Siebenhart, I. A.; Austin, A. T.; Sierra, C. A.: Aridec: an open database of litter mass loss from aridlands worldwide with recommendations on suitable model applications. Earth System Science Data 14 (7), pp. 3471 - 3488 (2022)
Vásquez, M.; Lara, W.; del Valle, J. I.; Sierra, C.: Reconstructing past fossil-fuel CO2 concentrations using tree rings and radiocarbon in the urban area of Medellín, Colombia. Environmental Research Letters 17 (5), 055008 (2022)
Chanca, I.; Trumbore, S. E.; Macario, K.; Sierra, C.: Probability distributions of radiocarbon in open linear compartmental systems at steady-state. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 127 (3), e2021JG006673 (2022)
Azizi-Rad, M.; Guggenberger, G.; Mad, Y.; Sierra, C. A.: Sensitivity of soil respiration rate with respect to temperature, moisture and oxygen under freezing and thawing. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 165, 108488 (2022)
Heckman, K.; Hicks Pries, C. E.; Lawrence, C. R.; Rasmussen, C.; Crow , S. E.; Hoyt, A. M.; von Fromm, S. F.; Shi, Z.; Stoner, S.; McGrath, C.et al.; Beem-Miller, J.; Berhe, A. A.; Blankinship, J. C.; Keiluweit, M.; Marín-Spiotta, E.; Monroe, J. G.; Plante, A. F.; Schimel, J.; Sierra, C.; Thompson, A.; Wagai, R.: Beyond bulk: Density fractions explain heterogeneity in global soil carbon abundance and persistence. Global Change Biology 28 (3), pp. 1178 - 1196 (2022)
Giraldo, J. A.; del Valle, J. I.; González-Caro, S.; Sierra, C.: Intra-annual isotope variations in tree rings reveal growth rhythms within the least rainy season of an ever-wet tropical forest. Trees 36 (3), pp. 1039 - 1052 (2022)
Uribe, M. R.; Sierra, C.; Dukes, J. S.: Seasonality of tropical photosynthesis: A pantropical map of correlations with precipitation and radiation and comparison to model outputs. Biogeosciences 126 (11), e2020JG006123 (2021)
Stoner, S.; Hoyt, A. M.; Trumbore, S. E.; Sierra, C.; Schrumpf, M.; Doetterl, S.; Baisden, W. T.; Schipper, L. A.: Soil organic matter turnover rates increase to match increased inputs in grazed grasslands. Biogeochemistry 156, pp. 145 - 160 (2021)
Extreme climate events endanger groundwater quality and stability, when rain water evades natural purification processes in the soil. This was demonstrated in long-term groundwater analyses using new analytical methods.
Extreme precipitation should increase with warmer temperatures. Data from tropical regions show that this correlation is obscured by the cooling effect of clouds. When cloud effects are corrected, the increase in extreme precipitation with rising temperatures becomes apparent.
More frequent strong storms are destroying ever larger areas of the Amazon rainforest. Storm damage was mapped between 1985 and 2020. The total area of affected forests roughly quadrupled in the period studied.
In the annual ranking of the world's most cited and thus most influential scientists, five authors from our institute are once again represented in 2024.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina will hold a joint conference on the challenges of achieving carbon neutrality in Berlin on October 29-30, 2024.
A recent study by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and the University of Leipzig suggests that increasing droughts in the tropics and changing carbon cycle responses due to climate change are not primarily responsible for the strong tropical response to rising temperatures. Instead, a few particularly strong El Niño events could be the cause.
A study by Leipzig University, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv) and the MPI for Biogeochemistry shows that gaps in the canopy of a mixed floodplain forest have a direct influence on the temperature and moisture in the forest soil, but only a minor effect on soil activity.
The Chapter of the Order has elected the writer, philosopher and filmmaker Alexander Kluge and the mathematician Gerd Faltings as domestic members of the Order and the geologist Susan Trumbore and the literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt as foreign members.
EU funds the international research project AI4PEX to further improve Earth system models and thus scientific predictions of climate change. Participating scientists from 9 countries met at the end of May 2024 to launch the project at the MPI for Biogeochemistry in Jena, which is leading the project.