Adaptation of ecosystem carbon fluxes to frequency and intensity of drought-rainfall events.

Input and output fluxes of carbon in terrestrial ecosystems are governed by the response of soil microorganisms and vegetation to weather events and climate. Recent evidence indicates that the short-term fluxes triggered by the alternation of drought and rainfall events can dominate the land-atmosphere carbon exchange. However, these fluxes are still poorly understood, scarcely quantified, and widely overlooked in the literature. This project aims at resolving this omission through an integrative empirical analysis based on a reinterpretation of ecosystem-level carbon flux data using eddy-covariance techniques.