The economic costs of environmental regulations have been widely debated since the U.S. began to restrict pollution emissions more than four decades ago. Using detailed production data from nearly 1.2 million plant observations drawn from the 1972-1993 Annual Survey of Manufactures, we estimate the effects of air quality regulations on manufacturing plants’ total factor productivity (TFP) level...

Plant biomass allocation between below- and above-ground parts can actively adapt to the ambient growth conditions and is a key parameter for estimating terrestrial ecosystem carbon (C) stocks. To investigate how climatic variations affect patterns of plant biomass allocation, we sampled 548 plants belonging to four dominant genera (Stipa spp., Cleistogenes spp., Agropyron spp., and Leymus spp....

Different directives of the European Union require operators of waste-to-energy (WTE) plants to report the amount of electricity that is produced from biomass in the waste feed, as well as the amount of fossil CO2 emissions generated by the combustion of fossil waste materials. This paper describes the application of the Balance Method for determining the overall amount of fossil and thus clima...

In California’s Mediterranean type grasslands, native perennial grasses such as Nassella pulchra are surrounded by introduced annual species and these annuals are thought to have displaced natives through much of their range. Amongst other invaders, two grasses Lolium multiflorum and Bromus hordeaceus, commonly dominate portions of the grassland with potential for N. pulchra restoration. We hyp...

Hexokinase (HXK) is a sugar-phosphorylating enzyme involved in sugar-sensing. It has recently been shown that HXK in guard cells mediates stomatal closure and coordinates photosynthesis with transpiration in the annual species tomato and Arabidopsis. To examine the role of HXK in the control of the stomatal movement of perennial plants, we generated citrus plants that express Arabidopsis HXK1 (...

Based on long-term rainfall measurements (1956-2012), water level records (1956-2006), and aquatic plants field survey data (1960-2014), the relationship between precipitation and aquatic vegetation succession in east Taihu Lake, China, is studied. Neither abrupt changes nor any trends were found in the annual rainfall series in Taihu Lake during the studied period (1956-2012). However, for sea...