Atmospheric CO2 fertilization effects on biomass yields of 10 crops in northern Germany

Increasing Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an important component of global climate change that has drawn the attention of environmentalists worldwide in the last few decades. Besides acting as an important greenhouse gas, it also produces a stimulatory effect, its instantaneous impact being a significant increase in the plant productivity. Atmospheric CO2 levels have linearly increased from approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) during pre-industrial times to the current level of more than 390 ppm. In past few years, anthropogenic activities led to a rapid increase in global CO2 concentration. Current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projection indicates that atmospheric CO2 concentration will increase over this century, reaching 730-1020 ppm by 2100. An increase in global temperature, ranging from 1.1 to 6.4oC depending on global emission scenarios, will accompany the rise in atmospheric CO2. As CO2 acts as a limiting factor in photosynthesis, the immediate effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 is improved plant productivity, a feature commonly termed as “CO2 fertilization”. Variability in crop responses to the elevated CO2 made the agricultural productivity and food security vulnerable to the climate change. Several studies have shown significant CO2 fertilization effect on crop growth and yield. An increase of 30 % in plant growth and yield has been reported when CO2 concentration has been doubled from 330 to 660 ppm. However, the fertilization effect of elevated CO2 is not very much effective in case of C4 plants which already contain a CO2 concentration mechanism, owing to their specific leaf 2 anatomy called kranz anatomy. As a result, yield increments observed in C4plants are comparatively lower than the C3 plants under similar elevated CO2 concentrations. This review discusses the trends and the causes of increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, its effects on the crop productivity and the discrepancies in the response of C3 and C4 plants to increasing CO2 concentrations.

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Statistical analysis of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and its relation to the possible existence of CO2 fertilization on a global scale

Tellus B ◽

10.1034/j.1600-0889.47.issue1.17.x ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 47 (1-2) ◽

pp. 206-211 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

KAZUTO OKAMOTO ◽

SHIN. TANIMOTO ◽

KIYOSHI OKANO

Keyword(s):

Statistical Analysis ◽

Global Scale ◽

Atmospheric Co2 ◽

Co2 Fertilization ◽

Co2 Concentrations ◽

Atmospheric Co2 Concentrations

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Erratum for the Research Article “Recent global decline of CO2 fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis” by S. Wang, Y. Zhang, W. Ju, J. M. Chen, P. Ciais, A. Cescatti, J. Sardans, I. A. Janssens, M. Wu, J. A. Berry, E. Campbell, M. Fernández-Martínez, R. Alkama, S. Sitch, P. Friedlingstein, W. K. Smith, W. Yuan, W. He, D. Lombardozzi, M. Kautz, D. Zhu, S. Lienert, E. Kato, B. Poulter, T. G. M. Sanders, I. Krüger, R. Wang, N. Zeng, H. Tian, N. Vuichard, A. K. Jain, A. Wiltshire, V. Haverd, D. S. Goll, J. Peñuelas

Science ◽

10.1126/science.abg8637 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 371 (6529) ◽

pp. eabg8637

Keyword(s):

Co2 Fertilization ◽

Research Article ◽

Fertilization Effects

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Drivers of multi-century trends in the atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> mean annual cycle in a prognostic ESM

Biogeosciences ◽

10.5194/bg-14-1383-2017 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 14 (6) ◽

pp. 1383-1401 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Jessica Liptak ◽

Gretchen Keppel-Aleks ◽

Keith Lindsay

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Annual Cycle ◽

Carbon Sink ◽

Atmospheric Co2 ◽

System Model ◽

Earth System ◽

Co2 Fertilization ◽

Cycle Amplitude ◽

The Mean

Abstract. The amplitude of the mean annual cycle of atmospheric CO2 is a diagnostic of seasonal surface–atmosphere carbon exchange. Atmospheric observations show that this quantity has increased over most of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) extratropics during the last 3 decades, likely from a combination of enhanced atmospheric CO2, climate change, and anthropogenic land use change. Accurate climate prediction requires accounting for long-term interactions between the environment and carbon cycling; thus, analysis of the evolution of the mean annual cycle in a fully prognostic Earth system model may provide insight into the multi-decadal influence of environmental change on the carbon cycle. We analyzed the evolution of the mean annual cycle in atmospheric CO2 simulated by the Community Earth System Model (CESM) from 1950 to 2300 under three scenarios designed to separate the effects of climate change, atmospheric CO2 fertilization, and land use change. The NH CO2 seasonal amplitude increase in the CESM mainly reflected enhanced primary productivity during the growing season due to climate change and the combined effects of CO2 fertilization and nitrogen deposition over the mid- and high latitudes. However, the simulations revealed shifts in key climate drivers of the atmospheric CO2 seasonality that were not apparent before 2100. CO2 fertilization and nitrogen deposition in boreal and temperate ecosystems were the largest contributors to mean annual cycle amplification over the midlatitudes for the duration of the simulation (1950–2300). Climate change from boreal ecosystems was the main driver of Arctic CO2 annual cycle amplification between 1950 and 2100, but CO2 fertilization had a stronger effect on the Arctic CO2 annual cycle amplitude during 2100–2300. Prior to 2100, the NH CO2 annual cycle amplitude increased in conjunction with an increase in the NH land carbon sink. However, these trends decoupled after 2100, underscoring that an increasing atmospheric CO2 annual cycle amplitude does not necessarily imply a strengthened terrestrial carbon sink.

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Comment on “Modelling the seasonal contribution of a CO2 fertilization effect of the terrestrial vegetation to the amplitude increase in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory” by G. H. Kohlmaier et al.

Tellus B ◽

10.3402/tellusb.v43i3.15282 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 43 (3) ◽

pp. 338-341 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Sherwood B. Idso

Keyword(s):

Atmospheric Co2 ◽

Terrestrial Vegetation ◽

Co2 Fertilization ◽

Mauna Loa ◽

Amplitude Increase ◽

Fertilization Effect ◽

Co2 Fertilization Effect

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Impacts of Change in Atmospheric CO2 Concentration on Larix gmelinii Forest Growth in Northeast China from 1950 to 2010

Forests ◽

10.3390/f10050454 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (5) ◽

pp. 454

Author(s):

Bin Wang ◽

Mingze Li ◽

Wenyi Fan ◽

Ying Yu ◽

Weiwei Jia

Keyword(s):

Tree Ring ◽

Northeast China ◽

Forest Growth ◽

Atmospheric Co2 ◽

Larix Gmelinii ◽

Biogeochemical Model ◽

Growth Enhancement ◽

Co2 Fertilization ◽

Tree Ring Data ◽

Residual Growth

Although CO2 fertilization on plant growth has been repeatedly modeled to be the main reason for the current changes in the terrestrial carbon sink at the global scale, there have been controversial findings on the CO2 fertilization effects on forests from tree-ring analyses. In this study, we employed conventional dendrochronological tree-ring datasets from Northeast China, to detect the effect of CO2 fertilization on Larix gmelinii growth from 1950 to 2010. Among four sites, there were two sites exhibiting a significant residual growth enhancement at a 90% confidence level after removing the size, age and climaterelated trends of tree-ring indices. In addition, we found consistency (R from 0.26 to 0.33, p < 0.1) between the high frequency CO2 fluctuation and residual growth indices at two of the four sites during the common period. A biogeochemical model was used to quantitatively predict the contribution of elevated atmospheric CO2 on accumulated residual growth enhancement. As found in the tree-ring data, 14% of the residual growth was attributed to the CO2 fertilization effect, while climate was responsible for approximately the remainding 86%.

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