Understanding the uncertainty in global forest carbon turnover

He length of time that carbon remains in forest biomass is one of the largest uncertainties in the global carbon cycle, with both recent-historical baselines and future responses to environmental change poorly constrained by available observations. In the absence of large-scale observations, models tend to fall back on simplified assumptions of the turnover rates of biomass and soil carbon pools to make global assessments. In this study, the biomass carbon turnover times calculated by an ensemble of contemporary terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) are analysed to assess their current capability to 40 accurately estimate biomass carbon turnover times in forests and how these times are anticipated to change in the future. global forest biomass turnover times vary from 12.2 to 23.5 years between models. TBM differences in phenological processes, which control allocation to and turnover rate of leaves and fine roots, are as important as tree mortality with regard to explaining the variation in total turnover among TBMs.

• Fecha de publicación: 2020
• Institución: Universidad del Rosario
• Repositorio: Repositorio EdocUR - U. Rosario
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:repository.urosario.edu.co:10336/27164
• Acceso en línea: https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-2019-491; https://repository.urosario.edu.co/handle/10336/27164
• Palabra clave: Biomass; Biosphere; Carbon cycle; Ecology; Environmental change; Geology; Physical geography; Plant functional type; Soil carbon Turnover
• License: Restringido (Acceso a grupos específicos)