Land Use Effects on Atmospheric C-13 Imply a Sizable Terrestrial CO2 Sink in Tropical Latitudes
- Author
- Townsend, Alan R.
- Published
- [2000].
- Physical Description
- 1 electronic document
- Additional Creators
- Tans, Pieter P., Asner, Gregory P., and White, James W. C.
Online Version
- hdl.handle.net , Connect to this object online.
- Restrictions on Access
- Unclassified, Unlimited, Publicly available.
Free-to-read Unrestricted online access - Summary
- Records of atmospheric CO2 and 13-CO2, can be used to distinguish terrestrial vs. oceanic exchanges of CO2 with the atmosphere. However, this approach has proven difficult in the tropics, partly due to extensive land conversion from C-3 to C-4 vegetation. We estimated the effects of such conversion on biosphere-atmosphere C-13 exchange for 1991 through 1999, and then explored how this 'land-use disequilibrium' altered the partitioning of net atmospheric CO2 exchanges between ocean and land using NOAA-CMDL data and a 2D, zonally averaged atmospheric transport model. Our results show sizable CO2 uptake in C-3-dominated tropical regions in seven of the nine years; 1997 and 1998, which included a strong ENSO event, are near neutral. Since these fluxes include any deforestation source, our findings imply either that such sources are smaller than previously estimated, and/or the existence of a large terrestrial CO2 sink in equatorial latitudes.
- Other Subject(s)
- Collection
- NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) Collection.
- Note
- Document ID: 20010047501.
- Terms of Use and Reproduction
- No Copyright.
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