Climate control on terrestrial biospheric carbon turnover

Eglinton, T. I. et al. (2021) Climate control on terrestrial biospheric carbon turnover. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(8), e201158511. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.2011585118)

Abstract

Terrestrial organic-carbon reservoirs (vegetation, soils) currently consume more than a third of anthropogenic carbon emitted to the atmosphere, but the response of this “terrestrial sink” to future climate change is widely debated. Rivers export organic carbon sourced over their watersheds, offering an opportunity to assess controls on land carbon cycling on broad spatial scales. Using radiocarbon ages of biomolecular tracer compounds exported by rivers, we show that temperature and precipitation exert primary controls on biospheric-carbon turnover within river basins. These findings reveal large-scale climate control on soil carbon stocks, and they provide a framework to quantify responses of terrestrial organic-carbon reservoirs to past and future change.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: This work was supported by grants from the US NSF (OCE-0928582 to T.I.E. and V.V.G.; OCE-0851015 to B.P.-E., T.I.E., and V.V.G.; and EAR-1226818 to B.P.-E.), Swiss National Science Foundation (200021_140850, 200020_163162, and 200020_184865 to T.I.E.), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41520104009 to M.Z.).
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Mcintyre, Dr Cameron
• Authors: Eglinton, T. I., Galy, V. V., Hemingway, J. D., Feng, X., Bao, H., Blattmann, T. M., Dickens, A. F., Gies, H., Giosan, L., Haghipour, N., Hou, P., Lupker, M., Mcintyre, C. P., Montlucon, D. B., Peucker-Ehrenbrink, B., Ponton, C., Schef, E., Schwab, M. S., Voss, B. M., Wacker, L., Wu, Y., and Zhao, M.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre
• Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• ISSN: 0027-8424
• ISSN (Online): 1091-6490
• Published Online: 15 February 2021
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2022 National Academy of Science
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(8):e2011585118
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License