Forest carbon sink neutralized by pervasive growth-lifespan trade-offs

Abstract

Land vegetation is currently taking up large amounts of atmospheric CO2, possibly due to tree growth stimulation. Extant models predict that this growth stimulation will continue to cause a net carbon uptake this century. However, there are indications that increased growth rates may shorten trees′ lifespan and thus recent increases in forest carbon stocks may be transient due to lagged increases in mortality. Here we show that growth-lifespan trade-offs are indeed near universal, occurring across almost all species and climates. This trade-off is directly linked to faster growth reducing tree lifespan, and not due to covariance with climate or environment. Thus, current tree growth stimulation will, inevitably, result in a lagged increase in canopy tree mortality, as is indeed widely observed, and eventually neutralise carbon gains due to growth stimulation. Results from a strongly data-based forest simulator confirm these expectations. Extant Earth system model projections of global forest carbon sink persistence are likely too optimistic, increasing the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Brienen, RJW https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5397-5755 Caldwell, L Duchesne, L Voelker, S Barichivich, J Baliva, M Ceccantini, G Di Filippo, A Helama, S Locosselli, GM Lopez, L Piovesan, G Schöngart, J Villalba, R Gloor, E
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Accepted: 27 July 2020 Published (online): 8 September 2020 Published: 8 September 2020
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/S008659/1
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	22 Sep 2020 09:12
Last Modified:	22 Sep 2020 09:12
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Nature
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-020-17966-z
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:164438

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Forest carbon sink neutralized by pervasive growth-lifespan trade-offs

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