Paul S.J. Verburg

Acting Executive Director of DEES & Associate Research Professor

Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences

Email: Paul.Verburg@dri.edu

Education

Professional Interests

Above: Paul Verburg (left) and former postdoc Bryan Stevenson (now at Landcare, New Zealand) in a soilpit in the Mojave desert. "When Temperatures Warm, Plants Take in Less CO2" - article appears in the November 2008 issue of EARTH.

My research focuses on the effects of large-scale perturbations such as climate change and acid rain on nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems with an emphasis on soil biogeochemical processes. Recent projects involved experimental studies focusing on the impacts of increased N deposition and precipitation on Mojave Desert ecosystems. More specifically, I was interested in assessing potential linkages between below-ground biotic processes including fine root dynamics and microbial decomposition and abiotic processes such as carbonate weathering and precipitation. This project was in collaboration with Jay Arnone, Giles Marion and Eric McDonald at DRI. In another project we assessed the effects of inter-annual climate variability on C and N dynamics in tallgrass prairie using DRI’s EcoCELL facility (with Jay Arnone at DRI, Dale Johnson at UNR, Yiqi Luo at OU, Linda Wallace at OU, and Dave Schimel at NCAR). Recently, I have become involved in research addressing the impacts of forest management on soils in the Lake Tahoe Basin in collaboration with Rick Susfalk. Finally, I am involved in a new project studying the environmental aspects of biomass production for use as biofuels in collaboration with Kent Hoekman, Jay Arnone, Tim Minor, Richard Jasoni and Amber Broch at DRI.

Research Areas

• Ecosystem ecology
• Biogeochemistry
• Climate change
• Soil trace gas emissions
• Soil chemistry
• Mojave Global Change Facility
• EcoCELL facility

Selected Publications

Verburg, P.S.J., D.W. Johnson, D.E. Schorran, L.L. Wallace, Y. Luo, J.A. Arnone III

In press. Impacts of an anomalously warm year on nutrient availability in experimentally manipulated tallgrass prairie ecosystems. Global Change Biology.

Arnone III, J.A., P.S.J. Verburg, D.W. Johnson, J.D. Larsen, R.L. Jasoni, A.J. Farnady, C.M. Batts, C. von Nagy,

W.G. Coulombe, D.E. Schorran, P.E. Buck, B.H. Braswell, J.S. Coleman, R.A. Sherry, L.L. Wallace, Y. Luo, D.S. Schimel. 2008. Prolonged suppression of ecosystem carbon dioxide uptake following an anomalously warm year. Nature. 455:383-386.

Marion, G.M., P.S.J. Verburg, E.V. McDonald, J.A. Arnone III. 2008.

Salt movement through a Mojave Desert soil. Journal of Arid Environments. 72:1009-1030.

Sherry, R.A., S. Gu, X. Zhou, N.A. Zehrbach, L.L. Wallace, Y. Luo, J.A. Arnone III, P.S.J. Verburg,

D. Schimel. 2007. Species-specific differences in flowering phenology in warmed tallgrass prairie plots. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.104:198-202.

Stevenson, B., P.S.J. Verburg. 2006.

Effluxed CO2-13C from sterilized and unsterilized treatments of a calcareous soil. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 38:1727-1733.

Verburg, P.S.J., J. Larsen, D.W. Johnson, D.E. Schorran, J.A. Arnone III. 2005.

. Impacts of an anomalously warm year on soil CO2 fluxes in experimentally manipulated tallgrass prairie ecosystems. Global Change Biology. 11:1720-1732.

Verburg P.S.J., W. Cheng, D.W. Johnson, D.E Schorran. 2004.

Nonsymbiotic nitrogen fixation in three-year-old Jeffrey pines and the role of elevated [CO2]. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 34:1979-1984.

Verburg, P.S.J., J.A Arnone III, D. Obrist, R.D. Evans, D. LeRoux-Swarthout,

D.W. Johnson, D.E. Schorran, Y. Luo, J.S. Coleman. 2004. Net ecosystem C exchange in two experimental grassland ecosystems. Global Change Biology. 10:498-508.