Woods Hole Research Center

President and Senior Scientist
Woods Hole Research Center
149 Woods Hole Road
Falmouth, MA 02540-1644

Phone:

508-444-1532

Fax:

508-444-1832

Email:

Education

Ph.D. - North Carolina State University
1986, Department of Forestry
Dissertation: Gaseous Nitrogen Losses from Two Forested Watersheds via Nitrification and Denitrification.

NSF Graduate Fellow

B.A. - Oberlin College
1978, Highest Honors in Biology; Phi Beta Kappa

Professional Experience

• Present: Executive Director and Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center
• 1999 - June, 2011: Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center
• 1994 - 1998: Associate Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center
• 1991 - 1993: Assistant Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center
• 1989 - 1991: National Research Council Associate, NASA Ames Research Center
• 1986 - 1989: Post Doctorate Research Associate in Soil Microbiology. Dept. of Plant and Soil Biology, University of California, Berkeley
• 1979 - 1981: Peace Corps Volunteer. Public health project in Zaire.

Research Interests

Biogeochemistry and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, including the effects of management, land use change, and climatic change on soil C and N stocks, trace gas emissions from soils, and leaching of plant nutrients to streams and groundwater. Current study areas include the Brazilian Amazon Basin and Cerrado region and the forests of New England.

Books and Booklets

Suddick, E.C., and E.A. Davidson. 2012. The Role of Nitrogen in Climate Change and the Impacts of Nitrogen-Climate Interactions on Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecosystems, Agriculture, and Human Health in the United States: A Technical Report Submitted to the US National Climate Assessment. North American Nitrogen Center of the International Nitrogen Initiative (NANC-INI). Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA.

Davidson, E.A. 2000. You Can't Eat GNP. Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA, 247pp.

WHRC and UNEP. 2007. Reactive Nitrogen in the Environment: Too Much or Too Little of a Good Thing. Eric A. Davidson, Charles Arden-Clarke, and Elizabeth Braun (eds.). The United Nations Environment Programme. Paris, France.

Selected publications

Davidson, E.A. 2012. Representative concentration pathways and mitigation scenarios for nitrous oxide. Environmental Research Letters 7, 024005. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/2/024005.

Davidson, E.A., A.C. de Araújo, P. Artaxo, J.K. Balch, I.F. Brown, M.M.C. Bustamante, M.T. Coe, R.S. DeFries, M. Keller, M. Longo, J.W. Munger, W. Schroeder, B.S. Soares-Filho, C.M. Souza Jr, and S.C. Wofsy. 2012. The Amazon basin in transition. Nature, 481:321-328. View Nature Article

Davidson, E.A., M. B. David, J. N. Galloway, C. L. Goodale, R. Haeuber, J. A. Harrison, R. W. Howarth, D. B. Jaynes, R. R. Lowrance, B. T. Nolan, J. L. Peel, R. W. Pinder, E. Porter, C. S. Snyder, A. R. Townsend, and M. H. Ward. 2012. Excess nitrogen in the U.S. environment: trends, risks, and solutions. Issues in Ecology, Report Number 15, Ecological Society of America. View Issues in Ecology Report

Davidson, E.A., S. Samanta, S. S. Caramori, and K.E. Savage. 2012. The Dual Arrhenius and Michaelis-Menten (DAMM) kinetics model for decomposition of soil organic matter at hourly to seasonal time scales. Global Change Biology, 18, 371–384.

Pinder, R.W., E.A. Davidson, C.L. Goodale, T.L. Greaver, J.D. Herrick, and L. Liu. 2012. Climate change impacts of US reactive nitrogen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109:7671-7675. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1114243109.

Reay, D.S., E.A. Davidson, K.A. Smith, P. Smith, J.M. Melillo, F. Dentener, and P.J. Crutzen. 2012. Global agriculture and nitrous oxide emissions. Nature Climate Change 2:410–416. doi: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1458

Richey, J.E., M.V. Ballester, E.A. Davidson, M.S. Johnson, and A.V. Krusche. 2011. Land-water interactions in the Amazon. Biogeochemistry, 105:1–5.

Conant, R. T., M. G. Ryan, G. I. Ågren, H. E. Birge, E. A. Davidson, P. E. Eliasson, S. E. Evans, S. D. Frey, C. P. Giardina, F. Hopkins, R. Hyvönen, M. U. F. Kirschbaum, J. M. Lavallee, J. Leifeld, W. J. Parton. 2011. Temperature and soil organic matter decomposition rates – synthesis of current knowledge and a way forward. Global Change Biology, in press.

Davidson EA, Lefebvre PA, Brando PM, Ray D, Trumbore SE, Solórzano LA, Ferreira JN, Bustamante MMdaC, and Nepstad DC. 2011. Carbon inputs and water uptake in deep soils of an eastern Amazon forest. Forest Science, 57:51-58.

Davidson, E.A., R.O. Figueiredo, D. Markewitz , and A. Aufdenkampe. 2010. Dissolved CO2 in small catchment streams of eastern Amazonia: A minor pathway of terrestrial carbon loss. JGR Biogeosciences, 115, G04005, doi:10.1029/2009JG001202

Schipper, L.A., A.J. Gold, and E.A. Davidson. 2010. Managing denitrification in human-dominated landscapes. Ecological Engineering, 36: 1503–1506.

Siddique, I., I.C.G. Vieira, S. Schmidt, D. Lamb, C.J.R. Carvalho, R.O. Figueirdo, S. Bloomberg, and E.A. Davidson. 2010. Nitrogen and phosphorus additions negatively affect tree species diversity in tropical forest regrowth trajectories. Ecology, 91: 2121–2131.

Davidson, E.A., K.E. Savage, N.D. Bettez, R. Marino, and R.W. Howarth. 2010. Nitrogen in runoff from residential roads in a coastal area. Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, 210: 3-13.

Bobbink, R. Hicks, K., Galloway, J., Spranger, T., Alkemade, R., Ashmore, M., Bustamante, M., Cinderby, S., Davidson, E., Dentener, F., Emmett, B., Erisman, J.W., Fenn, M., Gilliam, F., Nordin, A., Pardo, L., and De Vries, W. 2010. Global assessment of nitrogen deposition effects on terrestrial plant diversity: a synthesis. Ecological Applications, 20:30–59.

Almeida, A.S. de, Stone, T.A., Vieira, I.C.G., and Davidson, E.A., 2010. Non-frontier deforestation in the eastern Amazon. Earth Interactions, 14:1. DOI: 10.1175/2009EI290.1

Davidson, E.A. 2009. Contribution of manure and fertilizer nitrogen to increasing atmospheric nitrous oxide since 1860. Nature Geoscience, 2:659-662.

Savage, K.E., Davidson, E.A., Richardson, A. and Hollinger, D. Y. 2009. Three scales of temporal resolution from automated soil respiration. Agr. Forest Meterol. 149: 2012-2021.

Davidson, E.A. and Holbrook, N.M. 2009. Is temporal variation of soil respiration linked to the phenology of photosynthesis? pp. 187-199 In: A. Noormets (Ed.) Phenology of ecosystem processes. Springer, New York.

Davidson EA, Dail BD, Chorover J. 2008. Iron interference in the quantification of nitrate in soil extracts and its effect on hypothesized abiotic immobilization of nitrate. Biogeochemistry, 90:65–73.

Davidson, E.A., Nepstad, D.C., Ishida, F.Y., and Bando. P.M. 2008. Effects of an experimental drought and recovery on soil emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and nitric oxide in a moist tropical forest. Global Change Biology, 14, 2582–2590.

Davidson, E. A., G. P. Asner, T. A. Stone, C. Neill, and R. O. Figueiredo. 2008. Objective indicators of pasture degradation from spectral mixture analysis of Landsat imagery, J. Geophys. Res., 113, G00B03, doi:10.1029/2007JG000622.

Davidson, E.A., T.D. de A. Sá, C. J.R. Carvalho, R.O. Figueiredo, M.S.A. Kato, O.R. Kato, F.Y. Ishida. 2008. An integrated greenhouse gas assessment of an alternative to slash-and-burn agriculture in eastern Amazonia. Global Change Biology 14:998–1007.

Davidson, E.A., C.J.R. de Carvalho, A.M. Figueira, F.Y. Ishida, J.P.B. Ometto, G.B. Nardoto, R.T. Sabá, S.N. Hayashi, E.C. Leal, I.C.G. Vieira, and L.A. Martinelli. 2007. Recuperation of nitrogen cycling in Amazonian forests following agricultural abandonment. Nature 447:995-998.

Davidson, E.A. and I. Janssens. 2006. Temperature sensitivity of soil carbon decomposition and feedbacks to climate change. Nature 440:165-173.

Davidson, E.A. and S. Seitzinger. 2006. The enigma of progress in denitrification research. Ecol. Appl. 16:2057-2063.

Davidson, E.A., I. Janssens, and Y. Luo. 2006. On the variability of respiration in terrestrial ecosystems: moving beyond Q10. Global Change Biology 12:154-164.

Davidson E. A., A. D. Richardson, K. E. Savage, and D. Y. Hollinger. 2006. A distinct seasonal pattern of the ratio of soil respiration to total ecosystem respiration in a spruce-dominated forest. Global Change Biology 12: 230-239.

Davidson, E.A., Neill, C. Krusch, A.V., Ballester, V.V.R., Markewitz, D. and Figueiredo, R.de O. 2004. Loss of nutrients from terrestrial ecosystems to streams and the atmosphere following land use change in Amazonia. pp. 147- 158 In: DeFries, R., Asner, G., and Houghton R. (eds.), Ecosystems and Land Use Change. Geophysical Monograph Series 153, American Geophysical Union, Washington, D.C.

Davidson, E.A., C.J.R. de Carvalho, I.C.G. Vieira, R.O. Figueiredo, P. Moutinho, F.Y. Ishida, M.T.P. dos Santos, J.B. Guerrero, K. Kalif, and R.T. Sabá. 2004. Nutrient limitation of biomass growth in a tropical secondary forest: early results of a nitrogen and phosphorus amendment experiment. Ecological Applications 14:S150-S163.

Markewitz, D. E.A. Davidson, P. Moutinho, and D.C. Nepstad. 2004. Nutrient loss and redistribution after forest clearing on a highly weathered soil in Amazonia. Ecological Applications 14:S177-S199.

Achievements and Awards

Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science -- 2011

President-elect, Biogeosciences section of the American Geophysical Union -- 2010

North American Coordinator, International Nitrogen Initiative, 2010 to present.

Senior Subject Editor, Global Change Biology, June 2001-2011.

Project Scientist, NASA-LBA-ECO project, 2008-2011.

Lead PI – NSF Research Coordination Network on Denitrification, 2008 to 2011.

Lead PI – NSF Research Coordination Network on Reactive Nitrogen, 2011 to present.

ISI Highly Cited Researcher, 2007.