Quantifying spatial and temporal variation of soil respiration within and among northern temperate forest types

The following dissertation outlines a collection of work centered on the respiration of forest soils in common Lake State forest ecosystems in Northern Wisconsin. This work builds upon decades of previous studies and attempts to further the science in three ways, presented here in five chapters which are written as "stand alone" manuscripts formatted for journal submission. (1) Chapter 1 describes a method with which to measure soil respiration and presents a method to verify its accuracy. (2) Chapters 2, 3, and 4 examine the effects of temporal and spatial scale on the measurement, the interpretation, and the modeling of soil respiration. (3) Chapter 5 presents an analysis of soil respiration during a cyclic disturbance event and examines the efficacy of models to predict soil respiration when the environment changes in unforeseen ways.;It is my hope that these chapters will provide data and new ideas to larger studies of regional and global ecosystem processes. I also hope that this work will aid the development of future research and perhaps lead to and increased understanding of the natural world.