Spatial heterogeneity in forest carbon storage affects priorities for reforestation

Reforestation is an important strategy for nature-based climate solutions and identifying carbon storage potential of different locations is critical to its success. Applying average carbon values from forest inventories ignores the spatial heterogeneity in forest carbon and the effects of forest edges on carbon storage degradation. Here we show how spatially-explicit, predictive carbon modeling, that leverages satellite, social and biogeophysical datasets, can be used to identify more efficient restoration opportunities for climate mitigation than area-based carbon stock averages. Accounting for regeneration of forest edges, in addition to reforestation, boosts estimates of potential carbon gains by more than 20%. The total potential carbon gain that could be achieved through reforestation at the level indicated by the Bonn Challenge (350Mha) is 51 Gt CO2-eq, but the "missing carbon" in our current forests accounts for 64.6 Gt CO2-eq globally; the greatest potential carbon gains are found in areas of high fragmentation.

Food Webs and Ecosystems: Linking Species Interactions to the Carbon Cycle

All species within ecosystems contribute to regulating carbon cycling because of their functional integration into food webs. Yet carbon modeling and accounting still assumes that only plants, microbes, and invertebrate decomposer species are relevant to the carbon cycle. Our multifaceted review develops a case for considering a wider range of species, especially herbivorous and carnivorous wild animals. Animal control over carbon cycling is shaped by the animals’ stoichiometric needs and functional traits in relation to the stoichiometry and functional traits of their resources. Quantitative synthesis reveals that failing to consider these mechanisms can lead to serious inaccuracies in the carbon budget. Newer carbon-cycle models that consider food-web structure based on organismal functional traits and stoichiometry can offer mechanistically informed predictions about the magnitudes of animal effects that will help guide new empirical research aimed at developing a coherent understanding of the interactions and importance of all species within food webs.

Dynamics Modeling of CO2 in Oil Palm

Oil palm plantation has a high potency to absorb carbon. Limited observed data and expensive instrumentations to measure the absorbed carbon have caused an inaccurate estimation of carbon storage from oil palm. The objectives of this research were to develop a CO2 absorption model, and to calculate the carbon cycle based on climate factors and plant age. CO2 absorption was derived from gross primary production (GPP) and net primary production (NPP), which were ​​based on solar radiation. From NPP we derived net ecosystem exchange (NEE) by calculating the difference between NPP and soil respiration. Our results showed that age of oil palm has influenced the CO2 absorption from 9.8 (1 year) to 117 tons ha-1 year-1 (19 years), with average of 86.5 tons ha-1 year-1 (over 25-year life cycle). We validated our NPP model with biomass that indicated a very good performance of the model with R2 0.95 and RMSE 1.81. Meanwhile, the performance of NEE model was slightly lower (R2 0.71 and 0.72, for wet and dry conditions), but the model had a similar pattern with the measured NEE. Based on the model performance, the findings imply that the model is useful to estimate CO2 absorption, where there is no eddy covariance measurement. This research suggests that carbon modeling will contribute to global terrestrial carbon modeling.

Early Mississippian ocean anoxia triggered organic carbon burial and late Paleozoic cooling: Evidence from uranium isotopes recorded in marine limestone

The Early Mississippian (Tournaisian) positive δ13C excursion (mid-Tournaisian carbon isotope excursion [TICE]) was one of the largest in the Phanerozoic, and the organic carbon (OC) burial associated with its development is hypothesized to have enhanced late Paleozoic cooling and glaciation. We tested the hypothesis that expanded ocean anoxia drove widespread OC burial using uranium isotopes (δ238U) of Lower Mississippian marine limestone as a global seawater redox proxy. The δ238U trends record a large Tournaisian negative excursion lasting ∼1 m.y. The lack of covariation between δ238U values and facies changes and proxies for local depositional and diagenetic influences suggests that the δ238U trends represent a global seawater redox signal. The negative δ238U excursion is coincident with the first TICE positive excursion, supporting the hypothesis that an expanded ocean anoxic event controlled OC burial. These results provide the first evidence from a global seawater redox proxy that an ocean anoxic event drove Tournaisian OC burial and controlled Early Mississippian cooling and glaciation. Uranium and carbon modeling results indicate that (1) there was an ∼6× increase in euxinic seafloor area, (2) OC burial was initially driven by expanded euxinia followed by expanded anoxic/suboxic conditions, and (3) OC burial mass was ∼4–17× larger than that sequestered during other major ocean anoxic events.