Researchers paint a new picture of carbon in land ecosystems
Plants play a crucial role in the global climate system, removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air and converting it into carbohydrates. Carbon can be stored for several years or even many decades in the ecosystem before it is converted back into CO2 and returned to the atmosphere. The average global carbon turnover time is 23 years, according to a new report published in Nature by an international research team headed by Nuno Carvalhais and Markus Reichstein from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. In the tropics, it takes just 15 years before a carbon atom is released back into the atmosphere; in higher latitudes, it takes 255 years. Surprisingly, the analysis revealed that precipitation is at least as important as temperature in determining the turnover time. The researchers also established that overall more carbon than was previously thought is stored in land ecosystems - especially...