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  • Matters Arising
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Reply to: Old-growth forest carbon sinks overestimated

Nature volume 591, pages E24–E25 (2021)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 24 March 2021

replying to: P. Gundersen et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03266-z (2021)

Following re-analysis, Gundersen and collaborators1 found inconsistencies between the independent data they used and the flux measurements reported in our Letter2. In the accompanying Comment1, each of these inconsistencies is then used to question the quality of the flux measurements, which, if correct, would indeed call for the refutation of the main message: that at present, forests continue to take up carbon even in old age2. Although most of the points raised by Gundersen et al.1 do call for further investigation, none provides unequivocal proof of consistently low-quality flux measurements.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Sebastiaan Luyssaert

  2. Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany

    E.-Detlef Schulze

  3. Bioclimatology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Alexander Knohl

  4. College of Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Beverly E. Law

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

    Philippe Ciais

  6. School of GeoSciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    John Grace

Authors
  1. Sebastiaan Luyssaert
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  2. E.-Detlef Schulze
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  3. Alexander Knohl
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  4. Beverly E. Law
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  5. Philippe Ciais
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  6. John Grace
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the writing of the Matters Arising Reply. We could not reach Annett Börner and Dominik Hessenmöller, who co-authored the original study.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sebastiaan Luyssaert.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Luyssaert, S., Schulze, ED., Knohl, A. et al. Reply to: Old-growth forest carbon sinks overestimated. Nature 591, E24–E25 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03267-y

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