Journal
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 365, Issue 1549, Pages 2117-2126Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0038
Keywords
global warming; carbon sequestration; carbon cycle; metabolic theory; gross primary production; ecosystem respiration
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Funding
- Natural Environment Research Council [NER/S/A2006/14 029, NE/C002 105/1]
- Ramon y Cajal Fellowship [RYC-2008-03 664]
- Generalitat de Catalunya
- Natural Environment Research Council [CEH010021, ceh010022] Funding Source: researchfish
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The carbon cycle modulates climate change, via the regulation of atmospheric CO2, and it represents one of the most important services provided by ecosystems. However, considerable uncertainties remain concerning potential feedback between the biota and the climate. In particular, it is unclear how global warming will affect the metabolic balance between the photosynthetic fixation and respiratory release of CO2 at the ecosystem scale. Here, we present a combination of experimental field data from freshwater mesocosms, and theoretical predictions derived from the metabolic theory of ecology to investigate whether warming will alter the capacity of ecosystems to absorb CO2. Our manipulative experiment simulated the temperature increases predicted for the end of the century and revealed that ecosystem respiration increased at a faster rate than primary production, reducing carbon sequestration by 13 per cent. These results confirmed our theoretical predictions based on the differential activation energies of these two processes. Using only the activation energies for whole ecosystem photosynthesis and respiration we provide a theoretical prediction that accurately quantified the precise magnitude of the reduction in carbon sequestration observed experimentally. We suggest the combination of whole-ecosystem manipulative experiments and ecological theory is one of the most promising and fruitful research areas to predict the impacts of climate change on key ecosystem services.
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