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 is being established at the ZF2 research site is near Manaus, Brazil.

We have laid out plots and conducted extensive site characterization. Construction of the FACE infrastructure for the first pair of plot is underway (fall, 2022). Please see the project website for a full description of the project.

AmazonFACE science team (poster PDF)
Pre-treatment measurements and NPP (poster PDF)
Assessment of functional diversity (poster PDF)
Model-experiment interaction (poster PDF)
Open-top chamber experiment (poster PDF)
Responses of Inga (poster PDF)
Socio-economic interactions (poster PDF)

In December 2022, tower construction was started and we restarted minirhizotron measurements.

In October 2022, we took advantage of the pits being dug for the foundations of towers to sample soil and roots throughout a depth profile.

Selected Publications and Presentations

Norby RJ, Garcia S, Pereira I, Aleixo I, Miron AC, Cordeiro AL, Takeshi B, Lapola DM, Quesada CA. “Pretreatment carbon cycling assessment will aid detection of responses to elevated CO₂ in the AmazonFace experiment”, INTECOL, Geneva Switzerland, August 2022. INTECOL_presentation.

Martins NP, Fuchslueger L, Fleischer K, Andersen KM, Assis RL, Baccaro FB, Camargo PB, Cordeiro AL, Grandis A, Hartley IP, Hofhansl F, Lugli LF, Lapola DM, Menezes JG, Norby RJ, Rammig A, Rosa JS, Schaap KJ, Takeshi B, Valverde‑Barrantes OJ, Quesada CA. 2021. Fine roots stimulate nutrient release during early stages of leaf litter decomposition in a Central Amazon rainforest. Plant and Soil doi: 10.1007/s11104-021-05148-9. PDF

Menezes J, Garcia S, Grandis A, Nascimento H, Domingues TF, Guedes A, Aleixo I, Camargo P, Campos J, Damasceno A, Dias-Silva R, Fleischer K, Kruijt B, Longhi A, Martins N, Meir P, Norby RJ, Pereira I, Portela B, Rammig A, Ribeiro AG, Lapola DM, Quesada CA. 2021. Changes in leaf functional traits with leaf age: When do leaves decrease their photosynthetic capacity in Amazonian trees? Tree Physiology, DOI: 10.1093/treephys/tpab042. PDF

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, Rammig 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

Moutinho S. 2022. Testing the resilience of the Amazon. Eos, 103, article.

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