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Responses of ecosystem carbon cycle to experimental warming: a meta‐analysis
Author(s) -
Lu Meng,
Zhou Xuhui,
Yang Qiang,
Li Hui,
Luo Yiqi,
Fang Changming,
Chen Jiakuan,
Yang Xin,
Li Bo
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.144
H-Index - 294
eISSN - 1939-9170
pISSN - 0012-9658
DOI - 10.1890/12-0279.1
Subject(s) - environmental science , global warming , ecosystem , terrestrial ecosystem , carbon cycle , ecosystem respiration , primary production , climate change , ecology , atmospheric sciences , carbon sink , biology , geology
Global warming potentially alters the terrestrial carbon (C) cycle, likely feeding back to further climate warming. However, how the ecosystem C cycle responds and feeds back to warming remains unclear. Here we used a meta‐analysis approach to quantify the response ratios of 18 variables of the ecosystem C cycle to experimental warming and evaluated ecosystem C‐cycle feedback to climate warming. Our results showed that warming stimulated gross ecosystem photosynthesis (GEP) by 15.7%, net primary production (NPP) by 4.4%, and plant C pools from above‐ and belowground parts by 6.8% and 7.0%, respectively. Experimental warming accelerated litter mass loss by 6.8%, soil respiration by 9.0%, and dissolved organic C leaching by 12.1%. In addition, the responses of some of those variables to experimental warming differed among the ecosystem types. Our results demonstrated that the stimulation of plant‐derived C influx basically offset the increase in warming‐induced efflux and resulted in insignificant changes in litter and soil C content, indicating that climate warming may not trigger strong positive C‐climate feedback from terrestrial ecosystems. Moreover, the increase in plant C storage together with the slight but not statistically significant decrease of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) across ecosystems suggests that terrestrial ecosystems might be a weak C sink rather than a C source under global climate warming. Our results are also potentially useful for parameterizing and benchmarking land surface models in terms of C cycle responses to climate warming.