Published October 24, 2019
| Version v1
Dataset
Open
Data for "Pervasive Decreases in Living Vegetation Carbon Turnover Time Across Forest Climate Zones (PNAS)"
Description
Forests play a major role in the global carbon cycle. Previous studies on the capacity of forests to sequester atmospheric CO2 have mostly focused on carbon uptake, but the roles of carbon turnover time and its spatiotemporal changes remain poorly understood. Here, we used long-term inventory data (1955-2018) from 695 mature forest plots to quantify temporal trends in living vegetation carbon turnover time across tropical, temperate, and cold climate zones, and compared plot data to eight Earth system models (ESMs). Long-term plots consistently showed decreases in living vegetation carbon turnover time, likely driven by increased tree mortality across all major climate zones. Changes in living vegetation carbon turnover time were negatively correlated with CO2 enrichment in both forest plot data and ESM simulations. However, plot-based correlations between living vegetation carbon turnover time and climate drivers such as precipitation and temperature diverged from those of ESM simulations. Our analyses suggest that forest carbon sinks are likely to be constrained by a decrease in living vegetation carbon turnover time, and accurate projections of forest carbon sink dynamics will require an improved representation of tree mortality processes and their sensitivity to climate in ESMs.
Files
data_deposite_plot_scale_PNAS.csv
Additional details
Dates
- Created
-
2018-01-01
- Created
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2019-01-01
Additional information
- Contact Email
- anderegg@utah.edu
- Funding
- NSF Grant 1714972 , David and Lucille Packard Foundation , NSF Grant 1802880 , European Research Council Synergy grant ERC-SyG-2013-610028 IMBALANCE-P , Faculty Research Grant awarded by the Committee on Research from the University of California, Santa Cruz , USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the Agricultural and Food Research Initiative Competitive Programme, and Ecosystem Services and Agro-ecosystem Management, grant no. 2018-67019-27850 , USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Grant No. 2018-67012-28020
Legacy
- Date created
- 2018 to 2019
- Creators' ORCID
- 0000-0001-6551-3331
- Subject
- tree mortality , forest carbon stocks , carbon turnover , forest productivity , cold climate zone , tropical climate zone , climate change , carbon cycle , temperate climate zone , earth system models