Reduced productivity and carbon drawdown of tropical forests from ground-level ozone exposure
Cheesman, Alexander W., Brown, Flossie, Artaxo, Paulo, Farha, Mst Nahid, Folberth, Gerd A., Hayes, Felicity J., Heinrich, Viola H.A., Hill, Timothy C., Mercado, Lina M., Oliver, Rebecca J., O' Sullivan, Michael, Uddling, Johan, Cernusak, Lucas A., and Sitch, Stephen (2024) Reduced productivity and carbon drawdown of tropical forests from ground-level ozone exposure. Nature Geoscience, 17. pp. 1003-1007.
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Abstract
Elevated ground-level ozone, a result of human activity, is known to reduce plant productivity, but its influence on tropical forests remains unclear. Here we estimate how increased ozone exposure has affected tropical-forest productivity and the global carbon cycle. We experimentally measure the ozone susceptibility of various tropical tree species, and then incorporate these data into a dynamic global vegetation model. We find that current anthropogenic-derived ozone results in a substantial decline in annual net primary productivity (NPP) across all tropical forests, with some areas being particularly impacted. For example, Asia sees losses of 10.9% (7.2–19.7%) NPP. We calculate that this productivity decline has resulted in a cumulative loss in carbon drawdown of 0.29 PgC per year since 2000, equating to ~17% of the tropical contemporary annual land carbon sink in the twenty-first century. We also find that areas of current and future forest restoration are disproportionately affected by elevated ozone. Future socioeconomic pathways that reduce ozone formation in the tropics will incur benefits to the global carbon budget by relieving the current ozone impacts seen across both intact forest and areas of forest restoration, which are critical terrestrial regions for mitigation of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.
| Item ID: | 83774 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1752-0908 |
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| Copyright Information: | 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 licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence 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 licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Oct 2024 01:20 |
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