Richard J. Norby

AmazonFACE

The central feature of the AmazonFACE program is a field experiment of unprecedented scope that will expose an old-growth Amazon forest to the CO₂ concentration of the future. A Free-Air CO₂ Enrichment (FACE) experimental facility will be established at the ZF2 research site is near Manaus, Brazil.

We have laid out plots and conducted extensive site characterization, but we do not yet have sufficient funding to build the experimental infrastructure and start the experiment. Please see the project website for a full description of the project.

Selected Publications

Cordeiro AL, Norby RJ, Andersen KM, Valverde-Barrantes O, Fuchslueger L, Oblitas E, Hartley IP, Iversen CM, Gonçalves 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, doi: 10.1002/pei3.10010. PDF

Fleischer K, Rammigl A, De Kauwe MG, Walker AP, Domingues TF, Fuchslueger L, Garcia S, Goll DS, Grandis A, Jiang MK, Haverd V, Hofhansl F, Holm JA, Kruijt B, Leung F, Medlyn BE, Mercado LM, Norby RJ, Pak B, von Randow C, Quesada CA, Schaap KJ, Valverde-Barrantes OJ, Wang YP, Yang XJ, Zaehle S, Zhu Q, Lapola DM. 2019. Amazon forest response to CO₂ fertilization dependent on plant phosphorus acquisition. Nature Geoscience 12: 736-+. doi: 10.1038/s41561-019-0404-9. PDF

Pereira IS, Nascimento HEM, Vicari MB, Disney M, DeLucia EH, Domingues T, Kruijt B, Lapola D, Meir P, Norby RJ, Ometto JPHB, Quesada CA, Rammig A, Hofhansl F. 2019. Performance of laser-based electronic devices for structural analysis of Amazonian terra-firme forests. Remote Sensing 11: 510. doi: 10.3390/rs11050510. PDF

Hofhansl, F., Andersen, K.M., Fleischer, K., Fuchslueger, L., Rammig, A., Schaap, K.J., Valverde-Barrantes, O.J., & Lapola, D.M. (2016). Amazon Forest Ecosystem Responses to Elevated Atmospheric CO2 and Alterations in Nutrient Availability: Filling the Gaps with Model-Experiment Integration. Frontiers in Earth Science, 4 https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2016.00019. PDF

Norby RJ, De Kauwe MG, Domingues TF, Duursma RA, Ellsworth DS, Goll DS, Lapola DL, Luus KA, MacKenzie AR, Medlyn BE, Pavlick R, Rammig A, Smith B, Thomas R, Thonicke K, Walker AP, Yang X, Zaehle S. 2016. Model-data synthesis for the next generation of forest FACE experiments. New Phytologist 209: 17-28. doi: 10.1111/nph.13593. PDF

Lapola DM, Norby RJ (orgs.) 2014. AmazonFACE, Assessing the effects of increased CO₂ on the ecology and resilience of the Amazon forest – Science Plan & Implementation Strategy. MCTI, Brasilia, 54p. PDF

News articles

Grossman D. 2016. Amazon rainforest to get a growth check. Science 352: 635-636. PDF

Grossman D. 2019. What Ballooning Carbon Emissions Will Do to Trees. The Atlantic, October 18, 2019. (including the “diddly hypothesis!)

Tollefson J. 2013. Experiment aims to steep rainforest in carbon dioxide. Nature 496: 405-406. PDF

News story about Norby’s talk at Johns Hopkins University

Video from the Technical University of Munich