Sierra, Carlos
- Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
Abstract
Tropical forests fix large quantities of carbon from the atmosphere every year; however, the fate of this carbon as it travels through ecosystem compartments is poorly understood. In particular, there is a large degree of uncertainty regarding the time carbon spends in an ecosystem before it is respired and returns to the atmosphere as CO2. We estimated the fate of carbon (trajectory of photosynthetically fixed carbon through a network of compartments) and its transit time (time it takes carbon to pass through the entire ecosystem, from fixation to respiration) for an old-growth tropical forest located in the foothills of the Andes of Colombia. We show that on average, 50% of the carbon fixed at any given time is respired in
Keywords
carbon use efficiency; ecosystem respiration; global carbon cycle; model data assimilation; transit times; tropical forests
Published in
Journal of Ecology
2021, volume: 109, number: 8, pages: 2845-2855
Publisher: WILEY
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Physical Geography
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13723
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113019