Synergistic effects of four climate change drivers on terrestrial carbon cycling

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 787-793
Author(s):  
Peter B. Reich ◽  
Sarah E. Hobbie ◽  
Tali D. Lee ◽  
Roy Rich ◽  
Melissa A. Pastore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Cycling ◽  
Synergistic Effects ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon ◽  
Climate Change Drivers

scholarly journals Legacy effects from historical environmental changes dominate future terrestrial carbon uptake

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Krause ◽  
Almut Arneth ◽  
Anja Rammig
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Cycling ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Carbon Accumulation ◽  
Environmental Drivers ◽  
Carbon Uptake ◽  
Legacy Effects ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon ◽  
Dynamic Global Vegetation Model ◽  
Wood Harvest

<p>The carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems is determined by environmental drivers (chiefly related to climate and land use) which interact with each other and change over time. In particular, ecosystems are presently still affected by past environmental changes because they have not yet reached equilibrium with their environment. However, the magnitude and drivers of this legacy effect for the upcoming decades are still unclear. Here, we use the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS to calculate the effects of historical (1850-2015) and future (2015-2099, exemplarily for the high emission/moderate deforestation scenario SSP5-8.5) environmental changes on historical and future terrestrial carbon cycling and to quantify the contributions of the following environmental drivers: climate change, CO<sub>2 </sub>fertilization, agricultural expansion, shifting cultivation frequency, wood harvest, nitrogen deposition, and nitrogen fertilization.</p><p>According to our simulations, the land represented a cumulative net carbon source (-154 GtC) over the historical period mainly due to deforestation, wood harvest, and negative climate change impacts partly offset by carbon uptake via increased CO<sub>2</sub> levels and nitrogen input. In contrast, the land is simulated to act as a net carbon sink (+118 GtC) over the 21<sup>st</sup> century. This is mostly a result of historical environmental changes as ecosystems still adapt to present-day CO<sub>2</sub> and nitrogen availability as well as long-term vegetation regrowth following agricultural abandonment and wood harvest. The net impact of future environmental changes on future carbon cycling is much smaller because effects from individual environmental drivers largely compensate. Historical environmental changes dominate future terrestrial carbon cycling at least until mid-century when legacy effects gradually diminish and future environmental changes start to trigger carbon accumulation. Our results suggest that legacy effects persist even many decades after environmental changes occurred and need to be considered when interpreting alterations of the terrestrial carbon cycle.</p>

scholarly journals Historical climate controls soil respiration responses to current soil moisture

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (24) ◽  
pp. 6322-6327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine V. Hawkes ◽  
Bonnie G. Waring ◽  
Jennifer D. Rocca ◽  
Stephanie N. Kivlin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Soil Respiration ◽  
Carbon Cycling ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Microbial Respiration ◽  
Rainfall Gradient ◽  
Soil Microbial ◽  
Historical Climate ◽  
Moisture Dependence

Ecosystem carbon losses from soil microbial respiration are a key component of global carbon cycling, resulting in the transfer of 40–70 Pg carbon from soil to the atmosphere each year. Because these microbial processes can feed back to climate change, understanding respiration responses to environmental factors is necessary for improved projections. We focus on respiration responses to soil moisture, which remain unresolved in ecosystem models. A common assumption of large-scale models is that soil microorganisms respond to moisture in the same way, regardless of location or climate. Here, we show that soil respiration is constrained by historical climate. We find that historical rainfall controls both the moisture dependence and sensitivity of respiration. Moisture sensitivity, defined as the slope of respiration vs. moisture, increased fourfold across a 480-mm rainfall gradient, resulting in twofold greater carbon loss on average in historically wetter soils compared with historically drier soils. The respiration–moisture relationship was resistant to environmental change in field common gardens and field rainfall manipulations, supporting a persistent effect of historical climate on microbial respiration. Based on these results, predicting future carbon cycling with climate change will require an understanding of the spatial variation and temporal lags in microbial responses created by historical rainfall.

Variable silicon accumulation in plants affects terrestrial carbon cycling by controlling lignin synthesis

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. e183-e189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thimo Klotzbücher ◽  
Anika Klotzbücher ◽  
Klaus Kaiser ◽  
Doris Vetterlein ◽  
Reinhold Jahn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Cycling ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon ◽  
Lignin Synthesis ◽  
Silicon Accumulation

scholarly journals Skewed temperature dependence affects range and abundance in a warming world

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Hurford ◽  
Christina A. Cobbold ◽  
Péter K. Molnár
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Synergistic Effects ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Integrodifference Equation ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Growth Metrics ◽  
Fitness Curve ◽  
Warming World

AbstractPopulation growth metrics such asR0are usually asymmetric functions of temperature, with cold-skewed curves arising when the positive effects of a temperature increase outweigh the negative effects, and warm-skewed curves arising in the opposite case. Classically, cold-skewed curves are interpreted as more beneficial to a species under climate warming, because cold-skewness implies increased population growth over a larger proportion of the species’ fundamental thermal niche than warm-skewness. However, inference based on the shape of the fitness curve alone, and without considering the synergistic effects of net reproduction, density, and dispersal may yield an incomplete understanding of climate change impacts. We formulate a moving-habitat integrodifference equation model to evaluate how fitness curve skewness affects species’ range size and abundance during climate warming. In contrast to classic interpretations, we find that climate warming adversely affects populations with cold-skewed fitness curves, positively affects populations with warm-skewed curves and has relatively little or mixed effects on populations with symmetric curves. Our results highlight the synergistic effects of fitness curve skewness, spatially heterogeneous densities, and dispersal in climate change impact analyses, and that the common approach of mapping changes only inR0may be misleading.

scholarly journals The value of soil respiration measurements for interpreting and modeling terrestrial carbon cycling

2016 ◽  
Vol 413 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire L. Phillips ◽  
Ben Bond-Lamberty ◽  
Ankur R. Desai ◽  
Martin Lavoie ◽  
Dave Risk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Respiration ◽  
Carbon Cycling ◽  
Terrestrial Carbon

scholarly journals Skewed temperature dependence affects range and abundance in a warming world

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1908) ◽  
pp. 20191157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Hurford ◽  
Christina A. Cobbold ◽  
Péter K. Molnár
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Climate Warming ◽  
Synergistic Effects ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Integrodifference Equation ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Growth Metrics ◽  
Fitness Curve ◽  
Warming World

Population growth metrics such as R 0 are usually asymmetric functions of temperature, with cold-skewed curves arising when the positive effects of a temperature increase outweigh the negative effects, and warm-skewed curves arising in the opposite case. Classically, cold-skewed curves are interpreted as more beneficial to a species under climate warming, because cold-skewness implies increased population growth over a larger proportion of the species's fundamental thermal niche than warm-skewness. However, inference based on the shape of the fitness curve alone, and without considering the synergistic effects of net reproduction, density and dispersal, may yield an incomplete understanding of climate change impacts. We formulate a moving-habitat integrodifference equation model to evaluate how fitness curve skewness affects species’ range size and abundance during climate warming. In contrast to classic interpretations, we find that climate warming adversely affects populations with cold-skewed fitness curves, positively affects populations with warm-skewed curves and has relatively little or mixed effects on populations with symmetric curves. Our results highlight the synergistic effects of fitness curve skewness, spatially heterogeneous densities and dispersal in climate change impact analyses, and that the common approach of mapping changes only in R 0 may be misleading.

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