Empirical estimates of regional carbon budgets imply reduced global soil heterotrophic respiration

Ciais, P., Yao, Y., Gasser, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4882-2647, Baccini, A., Wang, Y., Lauerwald, R., Peng, S., Bastos, A., et al. (2021). Empirical estimates of regional carbon budgets imply reduced global soil heterotrophic respiration. National Science Review nwaa145. 10.1093/nsr/nwaa145.

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Abstract

Resolving regional carbon budgets is critical for informing land-based mitigation policy. For nine regions covering nearly the whole globe, we collected inventory estimates of carbon-stock changes complemented by satellite estimates of biomass changes where inventory data are missing. The net land–atmospheric carbon exchange (NEE) was calculated by taking the sum of the carbon-stock change and lateral carbon fluxes from crop and wood trade, and riverine-carbon export to the ocean. Summing up NEE from all regions, we obtained a global ‘bottom-up’ NEE for net land anthropogenic CO2 uptake of –2.2 ± 0.6 PgC yr−1 consistent with the independent top-down NEE from the global atmospheric carbon budget during 2000–09. This estimate is so far the most comprehensive global bottom-up carbon budget accounting, which set up an important milestone for global carbon-cycle studies. By decomposing NEE into component fluxes, we found that global soil heterotrophic respiration amounts to a source of CO2 of 39 PgC yr−1 with an interquartile of 33–46 PgC yr−1—a much smaller portion of net primary productivity than previously reported.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: carbon budget, human appropriation of ecosystems, soil carbon
Research Programs: Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA)
Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) > Exploratory Modeling of Human-natural Systems (EM)
Biodiversity and Natural Resources (BNR)
Biodiversity and Natural Resources (BNR) > Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services (AFE)
Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE)
Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) > Integrated Assessment and Climate Change (IACC)
Depositing User: Luke Kirwan
Date Deposited: 04 Jan 2021 13:54
Last Modified: 27 Aug 2021 17:34
URI: https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/16971

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