Biological control of the terrestrial carbon sink

This lecture reviews the past (since 1964 when the International Biological Program began) and the future of our understanding of terrestrial carbon fluxes with focus on pho-tosynthesis, respiration, primary-, ecosystem-, and biome-productivity. Photosynthetic capacity is related to the nitrogen concentration of leaves, but the capacity is only rarely reached under field conditions. Average rates of photosynthesis and stom-atal conductance are closely correlated and operate near 50% of their maximal rate, with light being the limiting factor in humid regions and air humidity and soil water the limiting factor in arid climates. Leaf area is the main factor to extrapolate from leaves to canopies, with maximum surface conductance being dependent on leaf level stomatal conduc-tance. Additionally, gas exchange depends also on rooting depth which determines the water and nutrient availability and on mycorrhizae which regulate the nutrient status. An important anthropogenic disturbance is the nitrogen uptake from air pollutants, which is not balanced by cation uptake from roots and this may lead to damage and breakdown of the plant cover. Photosynthesis is the main carbon input into ecosystems, but it alone does not represent the ecosystem carbon balance , which is determined by respiration of various kinds. Plant respiration and photosynthesis determine growth (net primary production) and microbial respiration balances the net ecosystem flux. In a spruce forest, 30% of the assimi-latory carbon gain is used for respiration of needles, 20% is used for respiration in stems. Soil respiration is about 50% the carbon gain, half of which is root respiration, half is microbial respiration. In addition, disturbances lead to carbon losses, where fire, harvest and grazing bypass the chain of respiration. In total, the carbon balance at the biome level is only about 1% of the photosynthetic carbon input, or may indeed become negative. The recent observed increase in plant growth has different reasons depending on the region of the world: anthropogenic nitrogen deposition is the controlling factor in Europe, increasing global temperatures is the main factor in Siberia, and maybe rising CO 2 the factor controlling the carbon fluxes in Amazonia. However, this has not lead to increases in net biome productivity, due to associated losses. Also important is the interaction between biodiversity and biogeochemical processes. It is shown that net primary productivity increases with plant species diversity (50% species loss equals 20% loss in productivity). However, in this ex-trapolation the action of soil biota is poorly understood although …