Predicting future carbon (C) dynamics in grassland ecosystems requires knowledge of how grazing and global climate change (e.g., warming, elevated CO2, increased precipitation, drought, and N fertilization) interact to influence C storage and release. Here, we synthesized data from 223 grassland studies to quantify the individual and interactive effects of herbivores and climate change on ecosystem C pools and soil respiration (Rs). Our results showed that grazing overrode global climate change factors in regulating grassland C storage and release (i.e., Rs). Specifically, grazing significantly decreased aboveground plant C pool (APCP), belowground plant C pool (BPCP), soil C pool (SCP), and Rs by 19.1%, 6.4%, 3.1%, and 4.6%, respectively, while overall effects of all global climate change factors increased APCP, BPCP, and Rs by 6.5%, 15.3%, and 3.4% but had no significant effect on SCP. However, the combined effects of grazing with global climate change factors also significantly decreased APCP, SCP, and Rs by 4.0%, 4.7%, and 2.7%, respectively but had no effect on BPCP. Most of the interactions between grazing and global climate change factors on APCP, BPCP, SCP, and Rs were additive instead of synergistic or antagonistic. Our findings highlight the dominant effects of grazing on C storage and Rs when compared with the suite of global climate change factors. Therefore, incorporating the dominant effect of herbivore grazing into Earth System Models is necessary to accurately predict climate–grassland feedbacks in the Anthropocene.

Light quantity and quality strongly influence plant growth. However, different ecosystems have different capabilities to assimilate solar radiation. In this study, the effects of cloudiness intensity on the net ecosystem exchange of carbon dioxide (NEE) were compared between an alpine grassland (with lower leaf area index) at A'Rou and an oasis maize cropland (with higher leaf area index) at Yingke, using flux data obtained during the middle of the growing season (July–August) in 2008 and 2009. The results showed that the response of NEE to photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) was more negative (carbon uptake) under cloudy than under clear skies at both sites. The maximum NEE occurred when the clearness index (CI) ranged from 0.4 to 0.7 under cloudy skies. The maximum enhancements were 11.9% for solar elevation angles of 60–65° in the grassland, and 34.9% for solar elevation angles of 60–65° and 10.3% for angles of 35–40° in the maize cropland before the irrigation period. The response of NEE to CI changed slightly with solar elevation angle in the grassland compared to the maize cropland. The results indicate that enhanced NEE under cloudy skies can be attributed to increasingly diffuse PAR and interactions with environmental factors (air temperature and vapor pressure deficit).

Aim Climate change, especially the wider occurrence of extreme events, is likely to increase the intensity and frequency of insect/pathogen outbreaks (referred to as biotic disturbance), which may considerably affect plant ecophysiological traits and thus the ecosystem carbon (C) cycle. Little is known, however, about the ways in which biotic disturbance quantitatively affects ecosystem C processes, especially those that occur below ground. We reveal the general patterns of below-ground C responses to biotic disturbance from field manipulative experiments and opportunistic events. Location Global.Method We carried out a meta-analysis examining the effects of biotic disturbance on 16 variables associated with below-ground C processes, based on 64 experimental studies.Results Biotic disturbance significantly decreased below-ground C pools with relatively long residence times (e.g. root biomass and soil organic carbon, SOC), but increased labile C pools (e.g. microbial biomass carbon, MBC; dissolved organic carbon, DOC), soil respiration (Rs) and its components, and microbial population sizes. Compared with the neutral or positive effects of other environmental changes on below-ground C pools and fluxes, biotic disturbance had a negative effect on plant biomass and SOC but a larger positive effect on MBC, DOC and Rs.Main conclusions Biotic disturbance can have stronger impacts on belowground C processes than other environmental changes, and the sensitive responses of soil labile C pools and C fluxes to biotic disturbance decrease long-term belowground C sequestration. More research efforts are, however, needed to reduce the uncertainties in quantifying the effects of biotic disturbance and to improve forecasting of the feedback between the carbon cycle and climate.

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Precise Point Positioning (PPP), initially developed for the analysis of the Global Positing System (GPS) data from a large geodetic network, gradually becomes an effective tool for positioning, timing, remote sensing of atmospheric water vapor, and monitoring of Earth’s ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC). The previous studies implicitly assumed that the receiver code biases stay constant over time in formulating the functional model of PPP. In this contribution, it is shown this assumption is not always valid and can lead to the degradation of PPP performance, especially for Slant TEC (STEC) retrieval and timing. For this reason, the PPP functional model is modified by taking into account the time-varying receiver code biases of the two frequencies. It is different from the Modified Carrier-to-Code Leveling (MCCL) method which can only obtain the variations of Receiver Differential Code Biases (RDCBs), i.e., the difference between the two frequencies’ code biases. In the Modified PPP (MPPP) model, the temporal variations of the receiver code biases become estimable and their adverse impacts on PPP parameters, such as ambiguity parameters, receiver clock offsets, and ionospheric delays, are mitigated. This is confirmed by undertaking numerical tests based on the real dual-frequency GPS data from a set of global continuously operating reference stations. The results imply that the variations of receiver code biases exhibit a correlation with the ambient temperature. With the modified functional model, an improvement by 42% to 96% is achieved in the Differences of STEC (DSTEC) compared to the original PPP model with regard to the reference values of those derived from the Geometry-Free (GF) carrier phase observations. The medium and long term (1 × 104 to 1.5 × 104 s) frequency stability of receiver clocks are also significantly improved.

During the period when a GPS satellite, the Earth and the Sun are approximately collinear, the phenomenon of eclipsing the satellite occurs, when the satellite yaw attitude deviates from its nominal case, i.e. the body X-axis cannot point towards the Sun for Block II&IIA or away from it for Block IIR satellites. The yaw attitude of the eclipsing satellites has a significant influence on both the satellite clock estimation at each International GNSS Service (IGS) Analysis Center (AC) and for users of the precise point positioning (PPP) implementations. It is known that, during the eclipsing periods, inconsistent yaw attitude models among the ACs will contribute to the errors of the IGS combined clock products. As for the PPP user, the influence of the eclipsing satellite is two-fold. First, as the satellite clocks are always kept fixed during PPP implementation, the above-mentioned problematic IGS clocks will inevitably be passed on to the PPP estimates. Second, the improper yaw attitude modeling of the eclipsing satellite will cause a correction bias exceeding 1 dm for the two kinds of attitude-related systematic errors, namely the phase wind-up and satellite antenna phase center offset, which will further deteriorate the accuracy of the PPP solutions. A yaw attitude model is introduced in this paper with the aim of improving the reliability of PPP solutions during the satellite eclipsing period. eclipsing GPS satellite, satellite body-fixed coordinate system, International GNSS Service combined clock solutions, precise point positioning, yaw attitude model Citation: Zhang B C, Ou J K, Yuan Y B, et al. Yaw attitude of eclipsing GPS satellites and its impact on solutions from precise point positioning.

Pennisetum sinese is a good forage grass with high biomass production and crude proteins. However, little is known about the endophytic fungi diversity of P. sinese, which might play an important role in the plant’s growth and biomass production. Here, we used high throughput sequencing of the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) sequences based on primers ITS5-1737 and ITS2-2043R to investigate the endophytic fungi diversity of P. sinese roots at the maturity stage, as collected from four provinces (Shaanxi province, SX; Fujian province, FJ; the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous prefecture, XJ and Inner Mongolia, including sand (NS) and saline-alkali land (NY), China). The ITS sequences were processed using QIIME and R software. A total of 374,875 effective tags were obtained, and 708 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were yielded with 97% identity in the five samples. Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were the two dominant phyla in the five samples, and the genera Khuskia and Heydenia were the most abundant in the FJ and XJ samples, respectively, while the most abundant tags in the other three samples could not be annotated at the genus level. In addition, our study revealed that the FJ sample possessed the highest OTU numbers (242) and the NS sample had the lowest (86). Moreover, only 22 OTUs were present in all samples simultaneously. The beta diversity analysis suggested a division of two endophytic fungi groups: the FJ sample from the south of China and the other four samples from north or northwest China. Correlation analysis between the environmental factors and endophytic fungi at the class level revealed that Sordariomycetes and Pucciniomycetes had extremely significant positive correlations with the total carbon, annual average precipitation, and annual average temperature, while Leotiomycetes showed an extremely significant negative correlation with quick acting potassium. The results revealed significant differences in the root endophytic fungi diversity of P. sinese in different provinces and might be useful for growth promotion and biomass production in the future.

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