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Yu, Kailiang
Smith, William K.
Trugman, Anna T.
Condit, Richard
Hubbell, Stephen P.
Sardans, Jordi
Peng, Changhui
Zhu, Kai
Peñuelas, Josep
Cailleret, Maxime
Levanic, Tom
Gessler, Arthur
Schaub, Marcus
Ferretti, Marco
Anderegg, William R. L.
Smith, William K.
Trugman, Anna T.
Condit, Richard
Hubbell, Stephen P.
Sardans, Jordi
Peng, Changhui
Zhu, Kai
Peñuelas, Josep
Cailleret, Maxime
Levanic, Tom
Gessler, Arthur
Schaub, Marcus
Ferretti, Marco
Anderegg, William R. L.
Pervasive decreases in living vegetation carbon turnover time across forest climate zones
3.85448
Born digital
Article
Forests play a major role in the global carbon cycle. Previous studies on the capacity of forests to sequester atmospheric CO2 have mostly focused on carbon uptake, but the roles of carbon turnover time and its spatiotemporal changes remain poorly understood. Here, we used long-term inventory data (1955 to 2018) from 695 mature forest plots to quantify temporal trends in living vegetation carbon turnover time across tropical, temperate, and cold climate zones, and compared plot data to 8 Earth system models (ESMs). Long-term plots consistently showed decreases in living vegetation carbon turnover time, likely driven by increased tree mortality across all major climate zones. Changes in living vegetation carbon turnover time were negatively correlated with CO2 enrichment in both forest plot data and ESM simulations. However, plot-based correlations between living vegetation carbon turnover time and climate drivers such as precipitation and temperature diverged from those of ESM simulations. Our analyses suggest that forest carbon sinks are likely to be constrained by a decrease in living vegetation carbon turnover time, and accurate projections of forest carbon sink dynamics will require an improved representation of tree mortality processes and their sensitivity to climate in ESMs.
116, 49, 24662-24667
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (published by)
Calendar Year 2019 Staff Publications
The Morton Arboretum Staff Publications and Dataset Collection
Publications
The Morton Arboretum Staff Publications and Dataset Collection
Publications
English
Copyright statement: This image may be protected by copyright law. Please contact the Sterling Morton Library ABOUT section for additional information.