Noel Michele Holbrook

About

Noel Michele Holbrook is the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry at Harvard University and an affiliate in Environmental Science & Engineering. She is a faculty associate at the Harvard University Center for the Environment and a participant in the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. She also serves as the director of the Harvard Forest. Her primary teaching areas include Environmental Science & Engineering. Her research focuses on biogeochemical cycles, climate change, water, and environmental science and engineering.

Research topics

• Biology
• Computer Science
• Botany
• Ecology
• Atmospheric sciences
• Environmental science
• Meteorology
• Materials science
• Evolutionary biology
• Statistical physics

Selected publications

• Remotely Sensed Soil Moisture Can Capture Dynamics Relevant to Plant Water Uptake

  Water Resources Research · 2023-01-26 · 84 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract A frequently expressed viewpoint across the Earth science community is that global soil moisture estimates from satellite L‐band (1.4 GHz) measurements represent moisture only in a shallow surface layer (0–5 cm) and consequently are of limited value for studying global terrestrial ecosystems because plants use water from deeper rootzones. Using this argumentation, many observation‐based land surface studies avoid satellite‐observed soil moisture. Here, based on peer‐reviewed literature…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Advanced vascular function discovered in a widespread moss

  Nature Plants · 2020 · 74 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Plant carbohydrate storage: intra‐ and inter‐specific trade‐offs reveal a major life history trait

  New Phytologist · 2022 · 70 citations

  ), trees, on average, reduce their storage by 9.5% in stems and 10.4% in roots. Our findings impact our understanding of basic plant biology, fit storage into a widely used growth-survival trade-off spectrum describing life history strategy, and challenges the assumptions of passive storage made in ecosystem models today.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Leaf Carbon Export and Nonstructural Carbohydrates in Relation to Diurnal Water Dynamics in Mature Oak Trees

  PLANT PHYSIOLOGY · 2020 · 55 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  ) trees, a species characterized as a passive loader. Export occurred throughout the day at equal or higher rates than at night despite a decrease in water potential to -1.8 MPa at midday. Suc and starch accumulated over the course of the day, with Suc contributing ∼50% of the 0.4 MPa diurnal osmotic adjustment. As a result of this diurnal osmotic adjustment, estimates of midday turgor were always >0.7 MPa. These findings illustrate the robustness of phloem functioning despite diurnal fluctuatio…

  DOI

• Extreme undersaturation in the intercellular airspace of leaves: a failure of Gaastra or Ohm?

  Annals of Botany · 2022 · 30 citations

  BACKGROUND: Recent reports of extreme levels of undersaturation in internal leaf air spaces have called into question one of the foundational assumptions of leaf gas exchange analysis, that leaf air spaces are effectively saturated with water vapour at leaf surface temperature. Historically, inferring the biophysical states controlling assimilation and transpiration from the fluxes directly measured by gas exchange systems has presented a number of challenges, including: (1) a mismatch in scales…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• IGERT: Integrated Training Program in Biomechanics

  NSF · $3.3M · 2003–2010

• Collaborative Research: Physiology of Long Distance Assimilate Transport

  NSF · $337k · 2015–2020

• Collaborative Research: Testing the Munch Hypothesis: Hydraulics of Phloem Transport in Vines and Trees

  NSF · $373k · 2010–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Maciej A. Zwieniecki

  University of California, Davis

  42 shared

• Fulton E. Rockwell

  Harvard University Press

  28 shared

• Lawren Sack

  University of California, Los Angeles

  26 shared

• Timothy J. Brodribb

  University of Tasmania

  25 shared

• Guillermo Goldstein

  23 shared

• Guang‐You Hao

  Institute of Applied Ecology

  16 shared

• Juan M. Losada

  Instituto de Hortofruticultura Subtropical y Mediterránea "La Mayora"

  15 shared

• Taylor S. Feild

  James Cook University

  12 shared

Similar researchers at Harvard University

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• Daniel Jacobh-108
• Jerry X. Mitrovicah-107