Two new publications on modeling respiration out!

Soon after the Heskel et al. PNAS article was published, there was a push to use these findings to examine different its effect on modeling at different scales. I'm please to say that this week one of those papers is now online early;  Liang et al. in Global Change Biology and the other paper was just accepted in Nature Communications, and will be available online soon. 

Liyin Liang, Vic Arcus, and Louis Schipper, all representing the University of Waikato in New Zealand, contacted myself and the senior authors of the PNAS paper to examine this comprehensive dataset and test the Macromolecular Rate Theory (MMRT) to see if an arguably more theory-based approach to temperature modeling would yield the same results: that the temperature response of leaf respiration is invariant across biomes and plant functional types. This study found that indeed the conclusions hold, and that MMRT can be applied effectively to this dataset, and the derived parameters from this approach can be used as 'thermal traits' to describe these species. 

The second modeling paper approaches respiration modeling at a much greater scale. Using the 'b,c' ("global polynomial equation" from the Heskel et al. PNAS paper), data-based, field collected estimates of R (from Atkin et al. 2015, New Phytologist), and also applying an acclimation effect, Chris Huntingford (Exeter, CEH in the UK) and a team of authors examined the impact of 'real' respiration and how it impacts global models of GPP, NPP, and other terrestrial global carbon parameters. This 'scaling up' can often reveal the large gaps in knowledge that have consequences for all aspects of the terrestrial carbon cycle when examined individually. 

Working with modelers - both larger and smaller scale - has been illuminating, and allows for totally different perspectives on the application of these temperature response functions of respiration. 

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