Identification

Title

The key role of forest disturbance in reconciling estimates of the northern carbon sink

Abstract

Northern forests are an important carbon sink, but our understanding of the driving factors is limited due to discrepancies between dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) and atmospheric inversions. We show that DGVMs simulate a 50% lower sink (1.1 ± 0.5 PgC yr −1 over 2001–2021) across North America, Europe, Russia, and China compared to atmospheric inversions (2.2 ± 0.6 PgC yr −1 ). We explain why DGVMs underestimate the carbon sink by considering how they represent disturbance processes, specifically the overestimation of fire emissions, and the lack of robust forest demography resulting in lower forest regrowth rates than observed. We reconcile net sink estimates by using alternative disturbance-related fluxes. We estimate carbon uptake through forest regrowth by combining satellite-derived forest age and biomass maps. We calculate a regrowth flux of 1.1 ± 0.1 PgC yr −1 , and combine this with satellite-derived estimates of fire emissions (0.4 ± 0.1 PgC yr −1 ), land-use change emissions from bookkeeping models (0.9 ± 0.2 PgC yr −1 ), and the DGVM-estimated sink from CO 2 fertilisation, nitrogen deposition, and climate change (2.2 ± 0.9 PgC yr −1 ). The resulting ‘bottom-up’ net flux of 2.1 ± 0.9 PgC yr −1 agrees with atmospheric inversions. The reconciliation holds at regional scales, increasing confidence in our results.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7g1654z

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-12-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact