Agricultural soils are the largest human‐induced source of nitrous oxide (N 2 O) due to the extensive fertilizer use in crop production. Despite progress made in global N 2 O budget accounting, using the IPCC‐derived static emission factors (EF) limits our capability to project future changes in agricultural N 2 O emissions and identify cost‐effective mitigation strategies. Here, we use a physics‐informed AI‐driven dynamic EF...

Fires disrupt ecosystems, release carbon, and reduce carbon uptake, which increases atmospheric CO 2 concentration, warms the atmosphere, and fosters more frequent and intense fires. Quantifying postfire recovery is crucial for understanding the adaptability and resilience of ecosystems to fire disturbances. Observations from satellite‐derived active fire (~1‐km) and Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) products reveal that Austra...

Effective nitrogen fertilizer management is crucial for reducing nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions while ensuring food security within planetary boundaries. However, climate change might also interact with management practices to alter N 2 O emission and emission factors (EFs), adding further uncertainties to estimating mitigation potentials. Here, we developed a new hybrid modeling framework that integrates a machine learning m...

Nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions from livestock manure contribute significantly to the growth of atmospheric N 2 O, a powerful greenhouse gas and dominant ozone‐depleting substance. Here, we estimate global N 2 O emissions from livestock manure during 1890–2020 using the tier 2 approach of the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. Global N 2 O emissions from livestock manure increased by ~350% from 451 [368–556] Gg N yea...

Livestock contributes approximately one‐third of global anthropogenic methane (CH 4 ) emissions. Quantifying the spatial and temporal variations of these emissions is crucial for climate change mitigation. Although country‐level information is reported regularly through national inventories and global databases, spatially explicit quantification of century‐long dynamics of CH 4 emissions from livestock has been poorly investig...

The ongoing development of the Global Carbon Project (GCP) global methane (CH 4 ) budget shows a continuation of increasing CH 4 emissions and CH 4 accumulation in the atmosphere during 2000–2017. Here, we decompose the global budget into 19 regions (18 land and 1 oceanic) and five key source sectors to spatially attribute the observed global trends. A comparison of top‐down (TD) (atmospheric and transport model‐based) and bot...

Globally, collapse of ecosystems—potentially irreversible change to ecosystem structure, composition and function—imperils biodiversity, human health and well‐being. We examine the current state and recent trajectories of 19 ecosystems, spanning 58° of latitude across 7.7 M km 2 , from Australia's coral reefs to terrestrial Antarctica. Pressures from global climate change and regional human impacts, occurring as chronic ‘press...

Conservation agriculture has been shown to have multiple benefits for soils, crop yield and the environment, and consequently, no‐till, the central practice of conservation agriculture, has rapidly expanded. However, studies show that the potential for carbon (C) sequestration in no‐till farming sometimes is not realized, let alone the ability to maintain or improve crop yield. Here we present a global analysis of no‐till‐indu...

Several lines of evidence point to an increase in the activity of the terrestrial biosphere over recent decades, impacting the global net land carbon sink (NLS) and its control on the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide ( c a ). Global terrestrial gross primary production (GPP)—the rate of carbon fixation by photosynthesis—is estimated to have risen by (31 ± 5)% since 1900, but the relative contributions of different putative...

Robust estimates of CO 2 budget, CO 2 exchanged between the atmosphere and terrestrial biosphere, are necessary to better understand the role of the terrestrial biosphere in mitigating anthropogenic CO 2 emissions. Over the past decade, this field of research has advanced through understanding of the differences and similarities of two fundamentally different approaches: “top‐down” atmospheric inversions and “bottom‐up” biosph...

With accumulation of carbon cycle observations and model developments over the past decades, exploring interannual variation (IAV) of terrestrial carbon cycle offers the opportunity to better understand climate–carbon cycle relationships. However, despite growing research interest, uncertainties remain on some fundamental issues, such as the contributions of different regions, constituent fluxes and climatic factors to carbon...

Carbon (C) emission and uptake due to land use and land cover change (LULCC) are the most uncertain term in the global carbon budget primarily due to limited LULCC data and inadequate model capability (e.g., underrepresented agricultural managements). We take the commonly used FAOSTAT‐based global Land Use Harmonization data (LUH2) and a new high‐resolution multisource harmonized national LULCC database (YLmap) to drive a land...

Our understanding and quantification of global soil nitrous oxide (N 2 O) emissions and the underlying processes remain largely uncertain. Here, we assessed the effects of multiple anthropogenic and natural factors, including nitrogen fertilizer (N) application, atmospheric N deposition, manure N application, land cover change, climate change, and rising atmospheric CO 2 concentration, on global soil N 2 O emissions for the pe...

Recent evidence shows that warm semi‐arid ecosystems are playing a disproportionate role in the interannual variability and greening trend of the global carbon cycle given their mean lower productivity when compared with other biomes (Ahlström et al . 2015 Science , 348, 895). Using multiple observations (land‐atmosphere fluxes, biomass, streamflow and remotely sensed vegetation cover) and two state‐of‐the‐art biospheric model...

Over the past century, major shifts in the geographic distribution of tree species have occurred in response to changes in land use and climate. We analyse species distribution and abundance from about 33 000 forest inventory plots in Spain sampled twice over a period of 10–12 years. We show a dominance of range contraction (extinction), and demographic decline over range expansion (colonization), with seven of 11 species exhi...

Extreme droughts, heat waves, frosts, precipitation, wind storms and other climate extremes may impact the structure, composition and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, and thus carbon cycling and its feedbacks to the climate system. Yet, the interconnected avenues through which climate extremes drive ecological and physiological processes and alter the carbon balance are poorly understood. Here, we review the literature o...

Savanna ecosystems comprise 22% of the global terrestrial surface and 25% of Australia (almost 1.9 million km 2 ) and provide significant ecosystem services through carbon and water cycles and the maintenance of biodiversity. The current structure, composition and distribution of Australian savannas have coevolved with fire, yet remain driven by the dynamic constraints of their bioclimatic niche. Fire in Australian savannas in...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate 10 process‐based terrestrial biosphere models that were used for the IPCC fifth Assessment Report. The simulated gross primary productivity ( GPP ) is compared with flux‐tower‐based estimates by Jung et al . [ Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011) G00J07] ( JU 11). The net primary productivity ( NPP ) apparent sensitivity to climate variability and atmospheric CO 2 trends is diagn...