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Richard J. Norby

I am an ecosystem ecologist interested in
•  Effects of CO2 enrichment on tree growth and forest metabolism
•  Ecosystem responses to atmospheric and climatic change
•  Carbon and nitrogen cycling in diverse ecosystems
•  Forest tree physiology and plant physiological ecology
•  Synthesis of experimental results to inform models

Research Fellow Emeritus
  Environmental Sciences Division & Climate Change Science Institute
  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Research Professor
  Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
    &  Bredesen Center
  University of Tennessee

Honorary Professor
  School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences
  University of Birmingham

Editor
  New Phytologist
     Trustee
  New Phytologist Foundation

New publications:

Norby RJ, Baxter T, Živković T, Weston DJ. 2023 Shading contributes to Sphagnum decline in response to warming. Ecology and Evolution 13:e10542. 10.1002/ece3.10542.

Recent projects include:

Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment (link)

Norby RJ, Warren JM, Iversen CM, Medlyn BE, McMurtrie RE. 2010. CO2 enhancement of forest productivity constrained by limited nitrogen availability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 19368-19373. 10.1073/pnas.1006463107

FACE Model-Data Synthesis (link)

Walker AP, De Kauwe MG, Medlyn BE, Zaehle S, Iversen CM, Asao S, Guenet B, Harper A, Hickler T, Hungate BA, Jain AK, Luo Y, Lu X, Lu M, Luus K, Megonigal JP, Oren R, Ryan E, Shu S, Talhelm A, Wang Y-P, Warren JM, Werner C, Xia J, Yang B, Zak DR, Norby RJ. 2019. Decadal biomass increment in early secondary succession woody ecosystems is increased by CO2 enrichment. Nature Communications 10: 454. 10.1038/s41467-019-08348-1

AmazonFACE Experiment (link)

Cordeiro AL, Norby RJ, Andersen KM, Valverde-Barrantes O, Fuchslueger L, Oblitas E, Hartley IP, Iversen CM, Goncalves NB, Takeshi B, Lapola DM, Quesada CA.2020. Fine-root dynamics vary with soil depth and precipitation in a low nutrient tropical forest in the Central Amazonia. Plant-Environment Interactions 1:3-16. 10.1002/pei3.10010

Root-Soil interface in Puerto Rico, part of NGEE-Tropics (link)

Cabugao KG, Yaffar D, Stenson N, Childs J, Phillips J, Mayes MA, Yang X, Weston DJ, Norby RJ. 2021. Bringing function to structure: Root-soil interactions shaping phosphatase activity throughout a soil profile in Puerto Rico. Ecology and Evolution 11: 1150-1164, 10.1002/ece3.7036

Yaffar D, Norby RJ. A historical and comparative review of 50 years of root data collection in Puerto Rico. Biotropica 52: 563-576. 10.1111/btp.12771

Sphagnum research at SPRUCE experiment (link)

Norby RJ, Childs J, Hanson PJ, Warren JM. 2019. Rapid loss of an ecosystem engineer: Sphagnum decline in an experimentally warmed bog. Ecology and Evolution 9:12571-12585. 10.1002/ece3.5722.

Contact: RNorby at utk.edu