Carbon in Amazon Forests: Unexpected Seasonal Fluxes and Disturbance-Induced Losses

By Scott Saleska, S. Miller, D. Matross, Michael L. Goulden, S. Wofsy, H. D. da Rocha, P. D. de Camargo, P. Crill, B. Daube, Helber C. de Freitas and 8 more. Science, 2003

697 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The net ecosystem exchange of carbon dioxide was measured by eddy covariance methods for 3 years in two old-growth forest sites near Santarém, Brazil. Carbon was lost in the wet season and gained in the dry season, which was opposite to the seasonal cycles of both tree growth and model predictions. The 3-year average carbon loss was 1.3 (confidence interval: 0.0 to 2.0) megagrams of carbon per hectare per year. Biometric observations confirmed the net loss but imply that it is a transient effect of recent disturbance superimposed on long-term balance. Given that episodic disturbances are characteristic of old-growth forests, it is likely that carbon sequestration is lower than has been inferred from recent eddy covariance studies at undisturbed sites.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/453dd174d548599f058efface4502458d8f8c977

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In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Globally significant changes in biological processes of the Amazon Basin: results of the Large‐scale Biosphere–Atmosphere Experiment (2004, background): “Very stable conditions within the forest canopy at night have been a major problem for interpreting these measurements in Amazonian forests (Goulden et al., in press; Saleska et al., 2003).”
Multi-element regulation of the tropical forest carbon cycle (2011, background): “Amazon Basin soils: management for continuous crop production.”
‘Breathing’ of the terrestrial biosphere: lessons learned from a global network of carbon dioxide flux measurement systems (2008, background): “In semi-arid and tropical regions, soil moisture is a better explanatory variable, but its dependence still relies on temperature (Rambal et al. 2003; Saleska et al. 2003; Hutyra et al. 2007; Ma et al. 2007; Reichstein et al. 2007b).”
Does variability in litter quality determine soil microbial respiration in an Amazonian rainforest (2011, background): “, 2008), but the regulation of C storage and soil C fluxes is subject to important uncertainties (Clark, 2002; Loescher et al., 2003; Saleska et al., 2003).”
Above-ground biomass and productivity in a rain forest of eastern South America (2008, background): “…work has been devoted to improve the quantification of NEE in the tropics (Chave et al. 2008, Grace 2004, Lewis et al. 2004, Loescher et al. 2003, Malhi et al. 2008, Saleska et al. 2003, Stephens et al. 2007), Amazonian forests remain severely understudied (Baker et al. 2004, Bonal et al. 2008).”
A data-driven analysis of energy balance closure across FLUXNET research sites: The role of landscape-scale heterogeneity (2013, neutral): “9714 Saleska et al. (2003)”
On the variability of respiration in terrestrial ecosystems: moving beyond Q10 (2006, background): “A growing network of eddy covariance studies has demonstrated that intersite and interannual variation in respiration greatly influences variation in net ecosystem productivity and annual terrestrial carbon sequestration (Valentini et al., 2000; Barford et al., 2001; Janssens et al., 2001; Savage & ”