A multiyear synthesis of soil respiration responses to elevated atmospheric CO₂ from four forest FACE experiments

Abstract

The rapidly rising concentration of atmospheric CO₂ has the potential to alter forest and global carbon cycles by altering important processes that occur in soil. Forest soils contain the largest and longest lived carbon pools in terrestrial ecosystems and are therefore extremely important to the land-atmosphere exchange of carbon and future climate. Soil respiration is a sensitive integrator of many soil processes that control carbon storage in soil, and is therefore a good metric of changes to soil carbon cycling.

Citation

King, John S.; Hanson, Paul J.; Bernhardt, Emily; DeAngelis, Paolo; Norby, Richard; Pregitzer, Kurt S. 2004. A multiyear synthesis of soil respiration responses to elevated atmospheric CO2 from four forest FACE experiments. Global Change Biology. 10:1027-1042.