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Europe's Terrestrial Biosphere Absorbs 7 to 12% of European Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions
Ivan A. Janssens,1*Annette Freibauer,2Philippe Ciais,3Pete Smith,4Gert-Jan Nabuurs,5,6Gerd Folberth,3Bernhard Schlamadinger,7Ronald W. A. Hutjes,5Reinhart Ceulemans,1E.-Detlef Schulze,2Riccardo Valentini,8A. Johannes Dolman9
Most inverse atmospheric models report considerable uptake ofcarbon dioxide in Europe's terrestrial biosphere. In contrast,carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems increase at a much smallerrate, with carbon gains in forests and grassland soils almostbeing offset by carbon losses from cropland and peat soils.Accounting for non–carbon dioxide carbon transfers thatare not detected by the atmospheric models and for carbon dioxidefluxes bypassing the ecosystem carbon stocks considerably reducesthe gap between the small carbon-stock changes and the largercarbon dioxide uptake estimated by atmospheric models. The remainingdifference could be because of missing components in the stock-changeapproach, as well as the large uncertainty in both methods.With the use of the corrected atmosphere- and land-based estimatesas a dual constraint, we estimate a net carbon sink between135 and 205 teragrams per year in Europe's terrestrial biosphere,the equivalent of 7 to 12% of the 1995 anthropogenic carbonemissions.
1 Department of Biology, Universiteit Antwerpen, B-2160 Antwerpen, Belgium. 2 Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, 07701 Jena, Germany. 3 Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, 91191 Gif sur Yvette, France. 4 Department of Plant and Soil Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3FX, UK. 5 Alterra Green World Research, Wageningen, 6700 AC, Netherlands. 6 European Forest Institute, 80100 Joensuu, Finland. 7 Joanneum Research A-8010 Graz, Austria. 8 Department of Forest Science and Environment, University of Tuscia, 01100 Viterbo, Italy. 9 Department of Geo-Environmental Sciences, Free University Amsterdam, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ijanssen{at}uia.ua.ac.be
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