IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v10y2019i1d10.1038_s41467-019-12257-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Vegetation structural change since 1981 significantly enhanced the terrestrial carbon sink

Author

Listed:
  • Jing M. Chen

    (University of Toronto
    Nanjing University)

  • Weimin Ju

    (Nanjing University
    Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographic Information Resource Development and Application)

  • Philippe Ciais

    (LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Universite Paris-Saclay)

  • Nicolas Viovy

    (LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Universite Paris-Saclay)

  • Ronggao Liu

    (Chinese Academy of Sciences)

  • Yang Liu

    (Chinese Academy of Sciences)

  • Xuehe Lu

    (Nanjing University)

Abstract

Satellite observations show that leaf area index (LAI) has increased globally since 1981, but the impact of this vegetation structural change on the global terrestrial carbon cycle has not been systematically evaluated. Through process-based diagnostic ecosystem modeling, we find that the increase in LAI alone was responsible for 12.4% of the accumulated terrestrial carbon sink (95 ± 5 Pg C) from 1981 to 2016, whereas other drivers of CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, and climate change (temperature, radiation, and precipitation) contributed to 47.0%, 1.1%, and −28.6% of the sink, respectively. The legacy effects of past changes in these drivers prior to 1981 are responsible for the remaining 65.5% of the accumulated sink from 1981 to 2016. These results refine the attribution of the land sink to the various drivers and would help constrain prognostic models that often have large uncertainties in simulating changes in vegetation and their impacts on the global carbon cycle.

Suggested Citation

  • Jing M. Chen & Weimin Ju & Philippe Ciais & Nicolas Viovy & Ronggao Liu & Yang Liu & Xuehe Lu, 2019. "Vegetation structural change since 1981 significantly enhanced the terrestrial carbon sink," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-7, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-12257-8
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12257-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12257-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-019-12257-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chen, Bin & Li, Yue & Wang, Shaoqiang & Chen, Jinghua & Zhang, Xuanze & Liu, Zhenhai & Croft, Holly, 2024. "Integrating leaf functional traits improves modelled estimates of carbon and water fluxes at a subtropical evergreen conifer forest," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 488(C).
    2. Ran Yang & Xiaoyan Li & Dehua Mao & Zongming Wang & Yanlin Tian & Yulin Dong, 2020. "Examining Fractional Vegetation Cover Dynamics in Response to Climate from 1982 to 2015 in the Amur River Basin for SDG 13," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-17, July.
    3. Liu, Zhenhai & Chen, Bin & Wang, Shaoqiang & Wang, Qinyi & Chen, Jinghua & Shi, Weibo & Wang, Xiaobo & Liu, Yuanyuan & Tu, Yongkai & Huang, Mei & Wang, Junbang & Wang, Zhaosheng & Li, Hui & Zhu, Tongt, 2021. "The impacts of vegetation on the soil surface freezing-thawing processes at permafrost southern edge simulated by an improved process-based ecosystem model," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 456(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-12257-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.