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Satellite-observed pantropical carbon dynamics

Nature Plants volume 5, pages 944–951 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Changes in terrestrial tropical carbon stocks have an important role in the global carbon budget. However, current observational tools do not allow accurate and large-scale monitoring of the spatial distribution and dynamics of carbon stocks1. Here, we used low-frequency L-band passive microwave observations to compute a direct and spatially explicit quantification of annual aboveground carbon (AGC) fluxes and show that the tropical net AGC budget was approximately in balance during 2010 to 2017, the net budget being composed of gross losses of −2.86 PgC yr−1 offset by gross gains of −2.97 PgC yr−1 between continents. Large interannual and spatial fluctuations of tropical AGC were quantified during the wet 2011 La Niña year and throughout the extreme dry and warm 2015–2016 El Niño episode. These interannual fluctuations, controlled predominantly by semiarid biomes, were shown to be closely related to independent global atmospheric CO2 growth-rate anomalies (Pearson’s r = 0.86), highlighting the pivotal role of tropical AGC in the global carbon budget.

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Fig. 1: Temporal variations in annual AGC in the tropics (continents and biomes), expressed as the difference from 2010 values.
Fig. 2: Spatial patterns and trends in tropical carbon changes.
Fig. 3: Interannual variability of global atmospheric CGR and tropical AGC fluxes.

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Data availability

The IGBP land-cover classification map, EVI, forest area loss map, GRACE data for terrestrial groundwater storage, precipitation data, skin temperature product, global CO2 growth-rate data, MEI and the Baccini and Avitabile biomass maps are publicly available. The SMOS-IC soil moisture dataset is available via Centre Aval de Traitement des Données SMOS at http://www.catds.fr/Products/Available-products-from-CEC-SM/SMOS-IC. SMOS-IC L-VOD and AGC products, the Saatchi, Bouvet and Mermoz biomass maps are available from J.-P.W., S.S.S. (sasan.s.saatchi@jpl.nasa.gov), A. Bouvet (alexandre.bouvet@cesbio.cnes.fr) and S. Mermoz (stephane.mermoz@cesbio.cnes.fr) both at CESBIO, Toulouse, France), respectively, on request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was jointly supported by the TOSCA (Terre Océan Surfaces Continentales et Atmosphère) CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales) programme, the European Space Agency Support to Science Element programme and SMOS Expert Support Laboratory contract, and the European Research Council Synergy grant ERC-2013-SyG-610028 IMBALANCE-P. P.C. acknowledges additional support from the ANR ICONV CLAND grant. J.C. has benefited from ‘Investissement d’Avenir’ grants managed by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (CEBA: ANR-10-LABX- 25-01; TULIP: ANR-10-LABX-0041; ANAEE-France: ANR-11-INBS-0001). M.B. was funded by an AXA postdoctoral fellowship. F.T. is supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant (project number 746347). R.F. acknowledges funding from the Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF) grant no. DFF–6111-00258. K.H. acknowledges support by the Belgian Science Policy Office-sponsored COBECORE project (contract BR/175/A3/COBECORE). L.F. acknowledges additional support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41801247) and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant no. BK20180806). Y.Q. and X.X. are supported in part by NASA Land Use and Land Cover Change programme (NNX14AD78G) and NASA Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory (GeoCarb) Mission (GeoCarb contract no. 80LARC17C0001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geographical Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

    Lei Fan

  2. ISPA, UMR 1391, INRA Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Villenave d’Ornon, France

    Lei Fan, Jean-Pierre Wigneron, Amen Al-Yaari & Koen Hufkens

  3. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, CEA/CNRS/UVSQ/Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Philippe Ciais

  4. Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France

    Jérôme Chave

  5. Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Martin Brandt & Rasmus Fensholt

  6. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Sassan S. Saatchi

  7. Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Sassan S. Saatchi

  8. Department of Geography, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich, Germany

    Ana Bastos

  9. Department of Applied Ecology and Environmental Biology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Koen Hufkens

  10. Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    Yuanwei Qin & Xiangming Xiao

  11. Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Chi Chen & Ranga B. Myneni

  12. Image Processing Laboratory, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Roberto Fernandez-Moran

  13. CESBIO, Université de Toulouse, CNES/CNRS/INRA/IRD/UPS, Toulouse, France

    Arnaud Mialon, N. J. Rodriguez-Fernandez & Yann Kerr

  14. Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Feng Tian

  15. CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Bellaterra, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas

  16. CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Josep Peñuelas

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  1. Lei Fan
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Contributions

J.-P.W., L.F. and P.C. conceived and designed the study. L.F. carried out all calculations with support from J.-P.W. and P.C. L.F. prepared the SMOS-IC data; S.S.S. prepared the Saatchi biomass map; Y.Q. and X.X. prepared annual forest area maps; C.C. and R.B.M. prepared the MODIS LAI dataset. J.-P.W., L.F. and P.C. conducted the analysis with support from J.C., M.B., R.F., S.S.S., J.P. and A.B. The manuscript was drafted by L.F., J.-P.W., P.C., J.C., R.F., M.B., J.P., K.H. with contributions by all co-authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jean-Pierre Wigneron or Philippe Ciais.

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Peer review information: Nature Plants thanks Edward Mitchard, Kolby Smith and the other, anonymous, reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary methods, Supplementary Figs. 1–16, Supplementary Tables 1–7 and Supplementary References.

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Fan, L., Wigneron, JP., Ciais, P. et al. Satellite-observed pantropical carbon dynamics. Nat. Plants 5, 944–951 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-019-0478-9

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