Christian P Giardina

Climate change impacts on Ecosystem Services including biodiversity, fresh water and carbon sequestration. The Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry in collaboration with the University of Hawaii has established a climate and land-use - ecosystem observatory in the Hawaii’s Experimental Tropical Forest that features permanent ecosystem, vegetation and micrometeorological monitoring plots. These plots span a mean annual temperature gradient of six degrees Celsius and include pristine tropical forest as well as severely degraded cattle pasture at each temperature. These plots have been established following long-term vegetation monitoring protocols of the Center for Tropical Forest Science of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Annual measurements in these plots include aboveground and belowground carbon pools and fluxes to examine how climate variation and change impact ecosystem carbon process rates and sequestration including above and belowground carbon stocks, litter fall and wood production, aboveground net primary production, total belowground carbon flux, aboveground respiration and gross primary production. Plant and microbial population and community dynamics associated with changes in climate and land-use are also being measured.