
Anders Lindroth
Professor emeritus

The Full Annual Carbon Balance of Boreal Forests Is Highly Sensitive to Precipitation
Författare
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.
Avdelning/ar
- Institutionen för naturgeografi och ekosystemvetenskap
- BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
Publiceringsår
2014
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
315-319
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Environmental Science & Technology Letters
Volym
1
Issue
7
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
The American Chemical Society (ACS)
Ämne
- Physical Geography
Aktiv
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 2328-8930