Temperature affects all biological processes. Plants experience wide variation in temperature everyday, and temperature varies widely across the planet. Together, these facts create large uncertainty in any preduction of how the terrestrial biosphere will respond to a gradually increasing average temperature over the coming decades. Research in the Physiological Ecology group within the Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has focussed on how plant adjust to changing temperatures, how increased temperature interacts with rising atmospheric CO₂ concentration, and the implications of physiological adjustments to community and ecosystem-scale processes in a future, warmer climate.

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