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Science 17 March 2000:
Vol. 287. no. 5460, pp. 2004 - 2006
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5460.2004
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Reports

Contribution of Increasing CO2 and Climate to Carbon Storage by Ecosystems in the United States

David Schimel, 1* Jerry Melillo, 2 Hanqin Tian, 2* A. David McGuire, 3 David Kicklighter, 2 Timothy Kittel, 4 Nan Rosenbloom, 4 Steven Running, 5 Peter Thornton, 5 Dennis Ojima, 6 William Parton, 6 Robin Kelly, 6 Martin Sykes, 7 Ron Neilson, 8 Brian Rizzo 9

The effects of increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate on net carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems of the conterminous United States for the period 1895-1993 were modeled with new, detailed historical climate information. For the period 1980-1993, results from an ensemble of three models agree within 25%, simulating a land carbon sink from CO2 and climate effects of 0.08 gigaton of carbon per year. The best estimates of the total sink from inventory data are about three times larger, suggesting that processes such as regrowth on abandoned agricultural land or in forests harvested before 1980 have effects as large as or larger than the direct effects of CO2 and climate. The modeled sink varies by about 100% from year to year as a result of climate variability.

1 Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Postfach 10 01 64, D-07701 Jena, Germany.
2 The Ecosystems Center, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
3 U.S. Geological Survey, Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7020, USA.
4 National Center for Atmospheric Research, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307-3000, USA.
5 University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA.
6 NREL, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1499, USA.
7 Plant Ecology, Lund University, Ekologihuset 223 62 Lund, Sweden.
8 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Oregon State University, Forest Science Laboratory, 3200 Southwest Jefferson Way, Corvallis, OR 97333, USA.
9 Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dschimel{at}bgc-jena.mpg.de and htian{at}mbl.edu

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