The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large‐scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass‐loss rates and stabilization factors of plant‐derived carbon, using the Tea...

Understanding the critical soil moisture (SM) threshold (θ crit ) of plant water stress and land surface energy partitioning is a basis to evaluate drought impacts and improve models for predicting future ecosystem condition and climate. Quantifying the θ crit across biomes and climates is challenging because observations of surface energy fluxes and SM remain sparse. Here, we used the latest database of eddy covariance measur...

Estimates of carbon leaching losses from different land use systems are few and their contribution to the net ecosystem carbon balance is uncertain. We investigated leaching of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), and dissolved methane (CH 4 ), at forests, grasslands, and croplands across Europe. Biogenic contributions to DIC were estimated by means of its δ 13 C signature. Leaching of biogenic DIC...

Overviewing the European carbon (C), greenhouse gas (GHG), and non‐GHG fluxes, gross primary productivity (GPP) is about 9.3 Pg yr −1 , and fossil fuel imports are 1.6 Pg yr −1 . GPP is about 1.25% of solar radiation, containing about 360 × 10 18 J energy – five times the energy content of annual fossil fuel use. Net primary production (NPP) is 50%, terrestrial net biome productivity, NBP, 3%, and the net GHG balance, NGB, 0.3...

Ecosystem flux measurements using the eddy covariance (EC) technique were undertaken in 4 subsequent years during summer for a total of 562 days in an arctic wet tundra ecosystem, located near Cherskii, Far‐Eastern Federal District, Russia. Methane (CH 4 ) emissions were measured using permanent chambers. The experimental field is characterized by late thawing of permafrost soils in June and periodic spring floods. A stagnant...

Terrestrial ecosystems sequester 2.1 Pg of atmospheric carbon annually. A large amount of the terrestrial sink is realized by forests. However, considerable uncertainties remain regarding the fate of this carbon over both short and long timescales. Relevant data to address these uncertainties are being collected at many sites around the world, but syntheses of these data are still sparse. To facilitate future synthesis activit...

Eddy covariance was used to measure the net CO 2 exchange (NEE) over ecosystems differing in land use (forest and agriculture) in Thuringia, Germany. Measurements were carried out at a managed, even‐aged European beech stand ( Fagus sylvatica , 70–150 years old), an unmanaged, uneven‐aged mixed beech stand in a late stage of development ( F. sylvatica , Fraxinus excelsior , Acer pseudoplantanus , and other hardwood trees, 0–25...

Summary This paper presents CO 2 flux data from 18 forest ecosystems, studied in the European Union funded EUROFLUX project. Overall, mean annual gross primary productivity (GPP, the total amount of carbon (C) fixed during photosynthesis) of these forests was 1380 ± 330 gC m −2 y −1 (mean ±SD). On average, 80% of GPP was respired by autotrophs and heterotrophs and released back into the atmosphere (total ecosystem respiration,...

Summary Based on review and original data, this synthesis investigates carbon pools and fluxes of Siberian and European forests (600 and 300 million ha, respectively). We examine the productivity of ecosystems, expressed as positive rate when the amount of carbon in the ecosystem increases, while (following micrometeorological convention) downward fluxes from the atmosphere to the vegetation (NEE = Net Ecosystem Exchange) are...