Land use has greatly transformed Earth's surface. While spatial reconstructions of how the extent of land cover and land‐use types have changed during the last century are available, much less information exists about changes in land‐use intensity. In particular, global reconstructions that consistently cover land‐use intensity across land‐use types and ecosystems are missing. We, therefore, lack understanding of how changes i...

In this study, we use simulations from seven global vegetation models to provide the first multi‐model estimate of fire impacts on global tree cover and the carbon cycle under current climate and anthropogenic land use conditions, averaged for the years 2001–2012. Fire globally reduces the tree covered area and vegetation carbon storage by 10%. Regionally, the effects are much stronger, up to 20% for certain latitudinal bands,...

The measured net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO 2 between the ecosystem and the atmosphere reflects the balance between gross CO 2 assimilation [gross primary production (GPP)] and ecosystem respiration (R eco ). For understanding the mechanistic responses of ecosystem processes to environmental change it is important to separate these two flux components. Two approaches are conventionally used: (1) respiration measurements ma...