The results reveal significant losses of soil carbon over decadal time scales, overwhelming the increased carbon uptake from plants.
So, although DeVries and colleagues' work is a major advance in our understanding of these trends in ocean carbon uptake, it remains unclear for how long the increased carbon uptake observed during the 2000s will persist.
"It is about reducing carbon loss by reducing deforestation, and increasing carbon uptake by allowing young forests to regrow," Dr. Lourens Poorter, professor of functional ecology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and lead author of the study, told The Huffington Post.
Our results suggest twice higher increase in carbon uptake in temperate forests than a study based on 15N tracer field experiments [10], which suggested increase of 0.25 Pg carbon per year for temperate forests.
Our results suggest twice higher increase in carbon uptake in temperate forests than a study based on N tracer field experiments [ 10], which suggested increase of 0.25 Pg carbon per year for temperate forests.
However, the effect of rainfalls on NEE depends on the season: in autumn and winter, rainfalls were associated with an increase in carbon uptake, while in the warm/dry season they generated net carbon losses.
As a result, the new model found that the increase in carbon uptake by more vegetation will be overshadowed by a much larger amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.
In contrast, we find that high diffuse light fraction does not increase the carbon uptake rate in croplands and grasslands; for these ecosystems, we estimate that high AOD conditions reduce GPP by ∼17% during midday hours.
Another option is to increase the carbon uptake by letting forest stands grow for longer periods [6].
Two other alternatives could be a large scale deployment of artificial photosynthesis [7], or to increase the carbon uptake of the oceans by adding active absorbers.
