Amazon forest carbon is highly seasonal
An Amazon forest stored about four times more carbon in the dry season than the wet season.
Source
Evidence for strong seasonality in the carbon storage and carbon use efficiency of an Amazonian forest
What they did
Assimilated eddy-covariance and biometric data into a carbon model with separate wet- and dry-season parameters for a seasonal Amazonian forest.
What they found
Annual GPP 3756.7 gC m−2 yr−1 exceeded Reco; dry-season NEE was about four times stronger; heterotrophic respiration fell 36% in the dry season; CUE was 0.36.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Does not show that all Amazon forests share this fourfold dry-season sink.
Key terms
- GPP
- Gross primary production, total photosynthesis.
- NEE
- Net ecosystem exchange of CO2 with the atmosphere.
- Reco
- Ecosystem respiration (plants plus microbes).
- CUE
- Carbon use efficiency: fraction of GPP not respired by plants.
- Heterotrophic respiration
- CO2 from microbes decomposing organic matter.
- Data assimilation
- Fitting a model to multiple observations with uncertainty.
Flashcards
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Dry vs wet carbon sink:
Common questions
Annual GPP?
3756.7 gC m−2 yr−1.
Dry vs wet sink?
About four times stronger in dry season.
Dry-season Rh change?
36% reduction.
Mean CUE?
0.36.
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