Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Nitrogen Availability Dampens the Positive Impacts of CO 2 Fertilization on Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon and Water Cycles

2017; American Geophysical Union; Volume: 44; Issue: 22 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/2017gl075981

1944-8007

Liming He, Jing M. Chen, Holly Croft, Alemu Gonsamo, Xiangzhong Luo, Jane Liu, Ting Zheng, Ronggao Liu, Yang Liu,

Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics

Abstract The magnitude and variability of the terrestrial CO 2 sink remain uncertain, partly due to limited global information on ecosystem nitrogen (N) and its cycle. Without N constraint in ecosystem models, the simulated benefits from CO 2 fertilization and CO 2 ‐induced increases in water use efficiency (WUE) may be overestimated. In this study, satellite observations of a relative measure of chlorophyll content are used as a proxy for leaf photosynthetic N content globally for 2003–2011. Global gross primary productivity (GPP) and evapotranspiration are estimated under elevated CO 2 and N‐constrained model scenarios. Results suggest that the rate of global GPP increase is overestimated by 85% during 2000–2015 without N limitation. This limitation is found to occur in many tropical and boreal forests, where a negative leaf N trend indicates a reduction in photosynthetic capacity, thereby suppressing the positive vegetation response to enhanced CO 2 fertilization. Based on our carbon‐water coupled simulations, enhanced CO 2 concentration decreased stomatal conductance and hence increased WUE by 10% globally over the 1982 to 2015 time frame. Due to increased anthropogenic N application, GPP in croplands continues to grow and offset the weak negative trend in forests due to N limitation. Our results also show that the improved WUE is unlikely to ease regional droughts in croplands because of increases in evapotranspiration, which are associated with the enhanced GPP. Although the N limitation on GPP increase is large, its associated confidence interval is still wide, suggesting an urgent need for better understanding and quantification of N limitation from satellite observations.