Modeling climate change effects on the potential production of French plains forests at the sub-regional level

We modeled the effects of climate change and two forest management scenarios on wood production and forest carbon balance in French forests using process-based models of forest growth. We combined data from the national forest inventory and soil network survey, which were aggregated over a 50 x 50-km grid, i.e., the spatial resolution of the climate scenario data. We predicted and analyzed the climate impact on potential forest production over the period 1960-2100. All models predicted a slight increase in potential forest yield until 2030-2050, followed by a plateau or a decline around 2070-2100, with overall, a greater increase in yield in northern France than in the south. Gross and net primary productivities were more negatively affected by soil water and atmospheric water vapor saturation deficits in western France because of a more pronounced shift in seasonal rainfall from summer to winter. The rotation-averaged values of carbon flux and production for different forest management options were estimated during four years (1980, 2015, 2045 and 2080). Predictions were made using a two-dimensional matrix covering the range of local soil and climate conditions. The changes in ecosystem fluxes and forest production were explained by the counterbalancing effect of rising CO2 concentration and increasing water deficit. The effect of climate change decreased with rotation length from short rotations with high production rates and low standing biomasses to long rotations with low productivities and greater standing biomasses. Climate effects on productivity, both negative and positive, were greatest on high fertility sites. Forest productivity in northern France was enhanced by climate change, increasingly from west to east, whereas in the southwestern Atlantic region, productivity was reduced by climate change to an increasing degree from west to east.

The potential for rising CO2 to account for the observed uptake of carbon by tropical, temperate, and boreal forest biomes

We compiled, measured and simulated estimates of NPP and NBP for Amazonian tropical, European temperate, and Siberian Boreal forests from intensive stand-scale field studies, extensive forest biomass inventories, regional atmospheric inversions, and global ecosystem models. We analysed the random and systematic sources of uncertainties pertaining to each approach when comparing their results, and showed that estimates of NPP from different data streams are robustly comparable within their errors. Although NPP increases by a factor of four between Siberia and the Amazon, NBP is larger in Europe than elsewhere, demonstrating that carbon sequestration does not correlate with NPP. We analysed the NPP:NBP ratios in terms of the role of CO2 fertilization. Our results show that the tropical forest NBP carbon sink can be entirely explained by a CO2-induced enhancement of NPP, whereas such a mechanism can only account for 10% of the European sink and up to 50% of Siberian sink. Europe and Siberia are the two regions where factors other than CO, are likely to be dominant in controlling the sequestration of carbon by forest ecosystems, such as management practice, climate, nitrogen deposition, and variation in disturbance regimes.

Europe's terrestrial biosphere absorbs 7 to 12% of European anthropogenic CO2 emissions

Most inverse atmospheric models report considerable uptake of carbon dioxide in Europe's terrestrial biosphere. In contrast, carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems increase at a much smaller rate, with carbon gains in forests and grassland soils almost being offset by carbon losses from cropland and peat soils. Accounting for non-carbon dioxide carbon transfers that are not detected by the atmospheric models and for carbon dioxide fluxes bypassing the ecosystem carbon stocks considerably reduces the gap between the small carbon-stock changes and the larger carbon dioxide uptake estimated by atmospheric models. The remaining difference could be because of missing components in the stock-change approach, as well as the large uncertainty in both methods. With the use of the corrected atmosphere- and land-based estimates as a dual constraint, we estimate a net carbon sink between 135 and 205 teragrams per year in Europe's terrestrial biosphere, the equivalent of 7 to 12% of the 1995 anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Towards robust regional estimates of CO2 sources and sinks using atmospheric transport models

Information about regional carbon sources and sinks can be derived from variations in observed atmospheric CO2 concentrations via inverse modelling with atmospheric tracer transport models. A consensus has not yet been reached regarding the size and distribution of regional carbon fluxes obtained using this approach, partly owing to the use of several different atmospheric transport models. Here we report estimates of surface-atmosphere CO2 fluxes from an intercomparison of atmospheric CO2 inversion models (the TransCom 3 project), which includes 16 transport models and model variants. We find an uptake of CO2 in the southern extratropical ocean less than that estimated from ocean measurements, a result that is not sensitive to transport models or methodological approaches. We also find a northern land carbon sink that is distributed relatively evenly among the continents of the Northern Hemisphere, but these results show some sensitivity to transport differences among models, especially in how they respond to seasonal terrestrial exchange of CO2. Overall, carbon fluxes integrated over latitudinal zones are strongly constrained by observations in the middle to high latitudes. Further significant constraints to our understanding of regional carbon fluxes will therefore require improvements in transport models and expansion of the CO2 observation network within the tropics.

Recent patterns and mechanisms of carbon exchange by terrestrial ecosystems

Knowledge of carbon exchange between the atmosphere, land and the oceans is important, given that the terrestrial and marine environments are currently absorbing about half of the carbon dioxide that is emitted by fossil-fuel combustion. This carbon uptake is therefore limiting the extent of atmospheric and climatic change, but its long-term nature remains uncertain. Here we provide an overview of the current state of knowledge of global and regional patterns of carbon exchange by terrestrial ecosystems. Atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen data confirm that the terrestrial biosphere was largely neutral with respect to net carbon exchange during the 1980s, but became a net carbon sink in the 1990s. This recent sink can be largely attributed to northern extratropical areas, and is roughly split between North America and Eurasia. Tropical land areas, however, were approximately in balance with respect to carbon exchange, implying a carbon sink that offset emissions due to tropical deforestation. The evolution of the terrestrial carbon sink is largely the result of changes in land use over time, such as regrowth on abandoned agricultural land and fire prevention, in addition to responses to environmental changes, such as longer growing seasons, and fertilization by carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Nevertheless, there remain considerable uncertainties as to the magnitude of the sink in different regions and the contribution of different processes.

Consistent land- and atmosphere-based U.S. carbon sink estimates

For the period 1980-89, we estimate a carbon sink in the coterminous United States between 0.30 and 0.58 petagrams of carbon per year (petagrams of carbon = 10(15) grams of carbon). The net carbon flux from the atmosphere to the land was higher, 0.37 to 0.71 petagrams of carbon per year, because a net flux of 0.07 to 0.13 petagrams of carbon per year was exported by rivers and commerce and returned to the atmosphere elsewhere. These land-based estimates are larger than those from previous studies (0.08 to 0.35 petagrams of carbon per year) because of the inclusion of additional processes and revised estimates of some component fluxes. Although component estimates are uncertain, about one-half of the total is outside the forest sector. We also estimated the sink using atmospheric models and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (the tracer-transport inversion method). The range of results from the atmosphere-based inversions contains the land-based estimates. Atmosphere- and land-based estimates are thus consistent, within the large ranges of uncertainty for both methods. Atmosphere-based results for 1980-89 are similar to those for 1985-89 and 1990-94, indicating a relatively stable U.S. sink throughout the period.

Regional changes in carbon dioxide fluxes of land and oceans since 1980

We have applied an inverse model to 20 years of atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements to infer yearly changes in the regional carbon balance of oceans and continents. The model indicates that global terrestrial carbon fluxes were approximately twice as variable as ocean fluxes between 1980 and 1998. Tropical land ecosystems contributed most of the interannual changes in Earth's carbon balance over the 1980s, whereas northern mid- and high-latitude land ecosystems dominated from 1990 to 1995. Strongly enhanced uptake of carbon was found over North America during the 1992-1993 period compared to 1989-1990.