Empirical estimates of regional carbon budgets imply reduced global soil heterotrophic respiration.

ABSTRACT: Resolving regional carbon budgets is critical for informing land-based mitigation policy. For nine regions covering nearly the whole globe, we collected inventory estimates of carbon-stock changes complemented by satellite estimates of biomass changes where inventory data are missing. The net land-atmospheric carbon exchange (NEE) was calculated by taking the sum of the carbon-stock change and lateral carbon fluxes from crop and wood trade, and riverine-carbon export to the ocean. Summing up NEE from all regions, we obtained a global 'bottom-up' NEE for net land anthropogenic CO₂ uptake of -2.2 ± 0.6 PgC yr^-1 consistent with the independent top-down NEE from the global atmospheric carbon budget during 2000-2009. This estimate is so far the most comprehensive global bottom-up carbon budget accounting, which set up an important milestone for global carbon-cycle studies. By decomposing NEE into component fluxes, we found that global soil heterotrophic respiration amounts to a source of CO₂ of 39 PgC yr^-1 with an interquartile of 33-46 PgC yr^-1-a much smaller portion of net primary productivity than previously reported.

SUBMITTER: Ciais P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8288404 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature