Anders Lindroth
Professor
The Full Annual Carbon Balance of Boreal Forests Is Highly Sensitive to Precipitation
Author
Summary, in English
The boreal forest carbon balance is predicted to be particularly sensitive to climate change. Carbon balance estimates of these biomes stem mainly from eddy-covariance measurements of net ecosystem exchange (NEE). However, a full net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) must include the lateral carbon export (LCE) through discharge. We show that annual LCE at a boreal forest site ranged from 4 to 28%, averaging 11% (standard deviation of 8%), of annual NEE over 13 years. Annual LCE and NEE are strongly anticorrelated; years with weak NEE coincide with high LCE. The decreased NEE in response to increased precipitation is caused by a reduction in the amount of incoming radiation caused by clouds. If our finding is also valid for other sites, it implies that increased precipitation at high latitudes may shift forest NECB in large areas of the boreal biome. Our results call for future analysis of this dual effect of precipitation on NEE and LCE.
Department/s
- Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
- BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
Publishing year
2014
Language
English
Pages
315-319
Publication/Series
Environmental Science & Technology Letters
Volume
1
Issue
7
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
The American Chemical Society (ACS)
Topic
- Physical Geography
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 2328-8930