Southern California provides an excellent natural laboratory for investigating the relationships between climate, plant physiology, vegetation demography, plant community composition, Net Primary Production (NPP), and ecosystem function. California’s climate is Mediterranean, with a mild wet winter, a warm or hot dry summer, and extreme interannual precipitation variation associated with the ENSO and PDO. Southern California’s landscape is climatologically and ecologically diverse; the elevation ranges from below sea level in the Salton Sink to 3300 m in the San Jacinto Mountains and 3500 m in the San Bernardino Mountains. The associated orographic precipitation gradient (the annual mean precipitation is 30 cm on the coastal plain, 60 to 100 cm in the mountains, and 10 to 20 cm in the rain shadows east of the mountains) supports a wide diversity of Leaf Area Indices and vegetation types (grassland and shrubland in the coastal plains and foothills, larger shrubs, evergreen hardwood trees, and tall conifers in the mountains, smaller and more sparse trees and shrubs on the desert side. The range of natural variation, both temporal and spatial, creates an exceptional experimental system for understanding how the physical environment controls ecosystem function.
Publications
Ecological consequences of variation in precipitation: separating short-versus long-term effects using satellite data GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY Volume: 23 Issue: 3 Pages: 358-370 Jin, Yufang; Goulden, Michael L.
Contrasting controls on wildland fires in Southern California during periods with and without Santa Ana winds. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (21698953) 119:3, 2014 Jin, Yufang; Randerson, James T; Faivre, Nicolas; Capps, Scott; Hall, Alex; Goulden, Michael L
Controls on gross production by a semiarid forest growing near its warm and dry ecotonal limit AGRICULTURAL AND FOREST METEOROLOGY Volume: 169 Pages: 51-60 Fellows, Aaron W.; Goulden, Michael L.
Rapid vegetation redistribution in Southern California during the early 2000s drought Journal of Geophysical Research (0148-0227) 117:G3, 2012 Fellows, Aaron W.; Goulden, Michael L.
Assessing regional evapotranspiration and water balance across a Mediterranean montane climate gradient Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (01681923) 166-167:n/a, 2012 Anderson, Ray G.; Jin, Yufang; Goulden, Michael L.
Relationships between climate, vegetation, and energy exchange across a montane gradient Journal of Geophysical Research (0148-0227) 116:G1, 2011 Anderson, Ray G.; Goulden, Michael L.
Has fire suppression increased the amount of carbon stored in western U.S. forests? Geophysical Research Letters (0094-8276) 35:12, 2008 Fellows, Aaron W.; Goulden, Michael L.
Rapid shifts in plant distribution with recent climate change Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (0027-8424 1091-6490) 105:33, 2008 Kelly, A. E.; Goulden, M. L.