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Tree physiology: Tracking tree carbon gain

Nature Plants volume 1, Article number: 15175 (2015) Cite this article

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Wood formation drives the storage of carbon in trees and other woody plants. A detailed analysis of conifer xylem tissue formation reveals how the intra-annual dynamics of biomass production are recorded in wood.

The world's forests hold about 650 billion tonnes of carbon1. Wood formation is the predominant process responsible for the storage of carbon in trees and other woody plants. Quantifying carbon sequestration in trees, and the carbon storage potential of forests worldwide, is therefore important for the construction of reliable carbon budgets. However, airborne and ground-based monitoring networks fail to reliably track tree and forest growth1. Moreover, the processes responsible for the fixation of carbon in wood are largely overlooked in attempts to quantify the effects of global climate change on the carbon storage capacity of different forest types. Writing in Nature Plants, Cuny and colleagues2 show that knowledge of the way in which carbon is actually inscribed into the wood matrix is essential to understand carbon fixation dynamics and their relation to local site conditions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ute Sass-Klaassen is in the Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group, Wageningen University, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands and chair of the EU COST Action FP1106 STReESS.,

    Ute Sass-Klaassen

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  1. Ute Sass-Klaassen
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Correspondence to Ute Sass-Klaassen.

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Sass-Klaassen, U. Tree physiology: Tracking tree carbon gain. Nature Plants 1, 15175 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2015.175

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2015.175

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