Anna Michalak

Director, Carnegie Climate and Resilience Hub



Forests dominate the interannual variability of the North American carbon sink


Journal article


Y. Shiga, A. Michalak, Yuanyuan Fang, K. Schaefer, A. Andrews, Deborah N. Huntzinger, C. Schwalm, K. Thoning, Yaxing Wei
Environmental Research Letters, 2018

Semantic Scholar DOI
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APA   Click to copy
Shiga, Y., Michalak, A., Fang, Y., Schaefer, K., Andrews, A., Huntzinger, D. N., … Wei, Y. (2018). Forests dominate the interannual variability of the North American carbon sink. Environmental Research Letters.


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Shiga, Y., A. Michalak, Yuanyuan Fang, K. Schaefer, A. Andrews, Deborah N. Huntzinger, C. Schwalm, K. Thoning, and Yaxing Wei. “Forests Dominate the Interannual Variability of the North American Carbon Sink.” Environmental Research Letters (2018).


MLA   Click to copy
Shiga, Y., et al. “Forests Dominate the Interannual Variability of the North American Carbon Sink.” Environmental Research Letters, 2018.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{y2018a,
  title = {Forests dominate the interannual variability of the North American carbon sink},
  year = {2018},
  journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
  author = {Shiga, Y. and Michalak, A. and Fang, Yuanyuan and Schaefer, K. and Andrews, A. and Huntzinger, Deborah N. and Schwalm, C. and Thoning, K. and Wei, Yaxing}
}

Abstract

Understanding what drives the interannual variability (IAV) of the land carbon sink is crucial for improving future predictions of this important, yet uncertain, component of the climate system. While drivers of global and hemispheric-scale net ecosystem exchange (NEE) IAV have been investigated, our understanding of the drivers of NEE IAV at regional scales (e.g. sub-continental, biome-level) is quite poor. Here we explore the biome-level attribution and drivers of North American NEE using inverse estimates derived from a dense network of atmospheric CO2 observations. We find that deciduous broadleaf and mixed forests are the primary regions responsible for North American NEE IAV, which differs from the ecoregions identified for the globe and Northern Hemisphere. We also find that a suite of terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) do not agree on the dominant biome contributing to NEE IAV, with TBMs falling along an apparent spectrum ranging between those with IAV dominated primarily by forested ecosystems to those with IAV dominated by non-forested ecosystems. Furthermore, this regional trade-off in TBM NEE IAV is found to be linked to differing regional responses to environmental drivers among TBMs. This work displays the importance of extra-tropical forests in driving continental NEE IAV and also highlights the challenges and limitations of using TBMs to inform regional-scale carbon flux dynamics.



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