In this talk, I will discuss carbon, water, and energy exchanges from a tall, old-growth forest ecosystem. This well-studied forest has a complicated vertical structure, large aboveground biomass, and a great deal of epiphytic cover. My group has measured canopy temperatures and carbonyl sulfide (OCS) concentrations at this site to better understand the dynamics of leaf and canopy energy balance, photosynthesis, and conductance. Canopy photosynthesis is inferred from OCS fluxes and compared with estimates derived from eddy flux measurements.

Charles Darwin was a brilliant naturalist who recognized many biological connections through his observations of the natural world. Darwin would no doubt revel in our ability to draw biological inferences from DNA sequences. Of course, we also know that biological inference and biological content are easily conflated and that genomics can only take us so far without proper authentication via empirical biology.