Dataset Information

Drought rapidly diminishes the large net CO₂ uptake in 2011 over semi-arid Australia.

ABSTRACT: Each year, terrestrial ecosystems absorb more than a quarter of the anthropogenic carbon emissions, termed as land carbon sink. An exceptionally large land carbon sink anomaly was recorded in 2011, of which more than half was attributed to Australia. However, the persistence and spatially attribution of this carbon sink remain largely unknown. Here we conducted an observation-based study to characterize the Australian land carbon sink through the novel coupling of satellite retrievals of atmospheric CO₂ and photosynthesis and in-situ flux tower measures. We show the 2010-11 carbon sink was primarily ascribed to savannas and grasslands. When all biomes were normalized by rainfall, shrublands however, were most efficient in absorbing carbon. We found the 2010-11 net CO₂ uptake was highly transient with rapid dissipation through drought. The size of the 2010-11 carbon sink over Australia (0.97 Pg) was reduced to 0.48 Pg in 2011-12, and was nearly eliminated in 2012-13 (0.08 Pg). We further report evidence of an earlier 2000-01 large net CO₂ uptake, demonstrating a repetitive nature of this land carbon sink. Given a significant increasing trend in extreme wet year precipitation over Australia, we suggest that carbon sink episodes will exert greater future impacts on global carbon cycle.

SUBMITTER: Ma X

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5123568 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Drought rapidly diminishes the large net CO<sub>2</sub> uptake in 2011 over semi-arid Australia.

Ma Xuanlong X Huete Alfredo A Cleverly James J Eamus Derek D Chevallier Frédéric F Joiner Joanna J Poulter Benjamin B Zhang Yongguang Y Guanter Luis L Meyer Wayne W Xie Zunyi Z Ponce-Campos Guillermo G

Scientific reports 20161125

Each year, terrestrial ecosystems absorb more than a quarter of the anthropogenic carbon emissions, termed as land carbon sink. An exceptionally large land carbon sink anomaly was recorded in 2011, of which more than half was attributed to Australia. However, the persistence and spatially attribution of this carbon sink remain largely unknown. Here we conducted an observation-based study to characterize the Australian land carbon sink through the novel coupling of satellite retrievals of atmosph ...[more]

PMID: 27886216

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Project description:Fire shapes the composition and functioning of ecosystems globally. In many regions, fire is actively managed to create diverse patch mosaics of fire-ages under the assumption that a diversity of post-fire-age classes will provide a greater variety of habitats, thereby enabling species with differing habitat requirements to coexist, and enhancing species diversity (the pyrodiversity begets biodiversity hypothesis). However, studies provide mixed support for this hypothesis. Here, using termite communities in a semi-arid region of southeast Australia, we test four key assumptions of the pyrodiversity begets biodiversity hypothesis (i) that fire shapes vegetation structure over sufficient time frames to influence species' occurrence, (ii) that animal species are linked to resources that are themselves shaped by fire and that peak at different times since fire, (iii) that species' probability of occurrence or abundance peaks at varying times since fire and (iv) that providing a diversity of fire-ages increases species diversity at the landscape scale. Termite species and habitat elements were sampled in 100 sites across a range of fire-ages, nested within 20 landscapes chosen to represent a gradient of low to high pyrodiversity. We used regression modelling to explore relationships between termites, habitat and fire. Fire affected two habitat elements (coarse woody debris and the cover of woody vegetation) that were associated with the probability of occurrence of three termite species and overall species richness, thus supporting the first two assumptions of the pyrodiversity hypothesis. However, this did not result in those species or species richness being affected by fire history per se. Consequently, landscapes with a low diversity of fire histories had similar numbers of termite species as landscapes with high pyrodiversity. Our work suggests that encouraging a diversity of fire-ages for enhancing termite species richness in this study region is not necessary.

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Drought rapidly diminishes the large net CO₂ uptake in 2011 over semi-arid Australia.

Publications

Drought rapidly diminishes the large net CO<sub>2</sub> uptake in 2011 over semi-arid Australia.

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Dataset Information

Drought rapidly diminishes the large net CO2 uptake in 2011 over semi-arid Australia.

Publications

Drought rapidly diminishes the large net CO<sub>2</sub> uptake in 2011 over semi-arid Australia.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets

Drought rapidly diminishes the large net CO₂ uptake in 2011 over semi-arid Australia.