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Ecosystem photosynthesis inferred from measurements of carbonyl sulphide flux

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 186–190 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Limited understanding of carbon dioxide sinks and sources on land is often linked to the inability to distinguish between the carbon dioxide taken up by photosynthesis, and that released by respiration1,2. Carbonyl sulphide, a sulphur-containing analogue of carbon dioxide, is also taken up by plants, and could potentially serve as a powerful proxy for photosynthetic carbon dioxide uptake, which cannot be directly measured above the leaf scale. Indeed, variations in atmospheric concentrations of carbonyl sulphide are closely related to those of carbon dioxide at regional, local and leaf scales3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Here, we use eddy covariance and laser spectroscopy10 to estimate the net exchange of carbon dioxide and carbonyl sulphide across three pine forests, a cotton field and a wheat field in Israel. We estimate gross primary productivity—a measure of ecosystem photosynthesis—directly from the carbonyl sulphide fluxes, and indirectly from carbon dioxide fluxes. The two estimates agree within an error of ±15%. The ratio of carbonyl sulphide to carbon dioxide flux at the ecosystem scale was consistent with the variability in mixing ratios observed on seasonal timescales in the background atmosphere. We suggest that atmospheric measurements of carbonyl sulphide flux could provide an independent constraint on estimates of gross primary productivity, key to projecting the response of the land biosphere to climate change.

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Figure 1: Daily changes in mixing ratios and fluxes of CO2 and COS.
Figure 2: Diurnal cycles in photosynthetic GPP.
Figure 3: Relative uptake of COS versus CO2.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to G. Fratini for help using EddyPro, and to M. Cuntz, G. Wohlfart and J. Berry for helpful discussions. The technical help of H. Sagi and A. Pelner are gratefully acknowledge. This work was made possible by financial support from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), the Minerva foundation, the JNF-KKL, and the C. Wills and R. Lewis program in Environmental Science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Sciences and Energy Research, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

    David Asaf, Eyal Rotenberg, Fyodor Tatarinov, Uri Dicken & Dan Yakir

  2. NOAA-ESRL, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA

    Stephen A. Montzka

Authors
  1. David Asaf
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  2. Eyal Rotenberg
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  3. Fyodor Tatarinov
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  4. Uri Dicken
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  5. Stephen A. Montzka
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  6. Dan Yakir
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Contributions

D.Y. conceived the study. D.A. performed all COS measurements. D.A., E.R., U.D. and F.T. carried out all of the field measurements and data analysis. S.A.M. provided the atmospheric data. D.Y. and D.A. wrote the paper with discussions and contributions to interpretations of the results from all co-authors.

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Correspondence to Dan Yakir.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Asaf, D., Rotenberg, E., Tatarinov, F. et al. Ecosystem photosynthesis inferred from measurements of carbonyl sulphide flux. Nature Geosci 6, 186–190 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1730

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