CO2 Absorption in Terrestrial Ecosystems and Global Environment

Long-Term CO2 Stimulation of Carbon Influx Into Global Terrestrial Ecosystems: Issues and Approaches

Estimating the additional amount of global photosynthetic arbon influx into terrestrial ecosystems (PG) becomes possible with a leaf-level factor (Y) developed by Luo & Mooney only when an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration (Ca) is small. Applying the Y factor to study long-term stimulation of PG with a large increase in Ca needs understanding of adjustments in leaf properties, canopy st...

Global Warming and Terrestrial Ecosystems: A Conceptual Framework for Analysis

raise global mean temperature over the next century by 1.0–3.5 °C (Houghton et al. 1995, 1996). Ecologists from around the world have begun experiments to investigate the effects of global warming on terrestrial ecosystems, the aspect of global climate change that attracts the most public attention (Woodwell and McKenzie 1995, Walker and Steffen 1999). The effort to understand response to warmi...

Climate legacies drive global soil carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems

Climatic conditions shift gradually over millennia, altering the rates at which carbon (C) is fixed from the atmosphere and stored in the soil. However, legacy impacts of past climates on current soil C stocks are poorly understood. We used data from more than 5000 terrestrial sites from three global and regional data sets to identify the relative importance of current and past (Last Glacial Ma...

Stoichiometric flexibility in terrestrial ecosystems under global change

Do global change experiments overestimate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems?

In recent decades, many climate manipulation experiments have investigated biosphere responses to global change. These experiments typically examined effects of elevated atmospheric CO(2), warming or drought (driver variables) on ecosystem processes such as the carbon and water cycle (response variables). Because experiments are inevitably constrained in the number of driver variables tested si...