Normative productivity of the global vegetation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The biosphere models of terrestrial productivity are essential for projecting climate change and assessing mitigation and adaptation options. Many of them have been developed in connection to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) that backs the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the end of 1990s, IGBP sponsored release of a data set summarizing the model outputs and setting certain norms for estimates of terrestrial productivity. Since a number of new models and new versions of old models were developed during the past decade, these normative data require updating.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here, we provide the series of updates that reflects evolution of biosphere models and demonstrates evolutional stability of the global and regional estimates of terrestrial productivity. Most of them fit well the long-living Miami model. At the same time we call attention to the emerging alternative: the global potential for net primary production of biomass may be as high as 70 PgC y^-1, the productivity of larch forest zone may be comparable to the productivity of taiga zone, and the productivity of rain-green forest zone may be comparable to the productivity of tropical rainforest zone.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The departure from Miami model's worldview mentioned above cannot be simply ignored. It requires thorough examination using modern observational tools and techniques for model-data fusion. Stability of normative knowledge is not its ultimate goal – the norms for estimates of terrestrial productivity must be evidence-based.</p

Long-term organic carbon turnover rates in natural and semi-natural topsoils

We combined published and new radiocarbon and ancillary data for uncultivated topsoils (typically 15 cm depth), to make two databases, one for the United Kingdom (133 sites), and one global (114 sites). Forest topsoils are significantly higher in radiocarbon than non-forest soils, indicating greater enrichment with ‘‘bomb carbon’’ and therefore faster C turnover, if steady-state conditions are assumed. Steady-state modelling, taking into account variations in atmospheric 14CO2, including the effects of 20th century nuclear weapons testing and radioactive decay, was used to quantify soil carbon turnover rates. Application of a model with variable slow (20 year mean residence time, MRT) and passive (1,000 year MRT) carbon pools partitioned the topsoil C approximately equally, on average, between the two pools when the entire data set was considered. However, the mean slow:passive ratio of 0.65:0.35 for forest soil was highly significantly different (p\0.001) from the 0.40:0.60 ratio for non-forest soils. Values of the slow and passive fractions were normally distributed, but the non-forest fractions showed greater variation, with approximately twice the relative standard deviations of the forest values. Assuming a litter input of 500 g C m-2 a-1, average global C fluxes (g C m-2 a-1) of forest soils are estimated to be 298 (through a fast pool ofMRT1 year), 200 (slow pool) and 2.0 (passive pool), while for non-forest soils, respective average fluxes of 347, 150 and 3.3 g C m-2 a-1 are obtained. The results highlight the widespread global phenomenon of topsoil C heterogeneity, and indicate key differences between forest and non-forest soils relevant for understanding and managing soil C