Temperate and boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere cover an area of about 2 x 10(7) square kilometres and act as a substantial carbon sink (0.6-0.7 petagrams of carbon per year). Although forest expansion following agricultural abandonment is certainly responsible for an important fraction of this carbon sink activity, the additional effects on the carbon balance of established forests of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, increasing temperatures, changes in management practices and nitrogen deposition are difficult to disentangle, despite an extensive network of measurement stations. The relevance of this measurement effort has also been questioned, because spot measurements fail to take into account the role of disturbances, either natural (fire, pests, windstorms) or anthropogenic (forest harvesting). Here we show that the temporal dynamics following stand-replacing disturbances do indeed account for a very large fraction of the overall variability in forest carbon sequestration. After the confounding effects of disturbance have been factored out, however, forest net carbon sequestration is found to be overwhelmingly driven by nitrogen deposition, largely the result of anthropogenic activities. The effect is always positive over the range of nitrogen deposition covered by currently available data sets, casting doubts on the risk of widespread ecosystem nitrogen saturation under natural conditions. The results demonstrate that mankind is ultimately controlling the carbon balance of temperate and boreal forests, either directly (through forest management) or indirectly (through nitrogen deposition).

No abstract

Abstract. In recent years evidence has emerged that the amount of isoprene emitted from a leaf is affected by the CO 2 growth environment. Many -though not all -laboratory experiments indicate that emissions increase significantly at below-ambient CO 2 concentrations and decrease when concentrations are raised to above-ambient. A small number of process-based leaf isoprene emission models can reproduce this CO 2 stimulation and inhibition. These models are briefly reviewed, and their performance in standard conditions compared with each other and to an empirical algorithm. One of the models was judged particularly useful for incorporation into a dynamic vegetation model framework, LPJ-GUESS, yielding a tool that allows the interactive effects of climate and increasing CO 2 concentration on vegetation distribution, productivity, and leaf and ecosystem isoprene emissions to be explored. The coupled vegetation dynamics-isoprene model is described and used here in a mode particularly suited for the ecosystem scale, but it can be employed at the global level as well.Annual and/or daily isoprene emissions simulated by the model were evaluated against flux measurements (or model estimates that had previously been evaluated with flux data) from a wide range of environments, and agreement between modelled and simulated values was generally good. By usCorrespondence to: A. Arneth (almut.arneth@nateko.lu.se) ing a dynamic vegetation model, effects of canopy composition, disturbance history, or trends in CO 2 concentration can be assessed. We show here for five model test sites that the suggested CO 2 -inhibition of leaf-isoprene metabolism can be large enough to offset increases in emissions due to CO 2 -stimulation of vegetation productivity and leaf area growth. When effects of climate change are considered atop the effects of atmospheric composition the interactions between the relevant processes will become even more complex. The CO 2 -isoprene inhibition may have the potential to significantly dampen the expected steep increase of ecosystem isoprene emission in a future, warmer atmosphere with higher CO 2 levels; this effect raises important questions for projections of future atmospheric chemistry, and its connection to the terrestrial vegetation and carbon cycle.

No abstract

Abstract. The possible connections between the carbon balance of ecosystems and aerosol-cloud-climate interactions play a significant role in climate change studies. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, whereas the net effect of atmospheric aerosols is to cool the climate. Here, we investigated the connection between forest-atmosphere carbon exchange and aerosol dynamics in the continental boundary layer by means of multiannual data sets of particle formation and growth rates, of CO 2 fluxes, and of monoterpene concentrations in a Scots pine forest in southern Finland. We suggest a new, interesting link and a potentially important feedback among forest ecosystem functioning, aerosols, and climate: Considering that globally increasing temperatures and CO 2 fertilization are likely to lead to increased photosynthesis and forest growth, an increase in forest biomass would increase emissions of non-methane biogenic volatile organic compounds and thereby enhance organic aerosol production. This feedback mechanism couples the climate effect of CO 2 with that of aerosols in a novel way.