Abstract
THE atmospheric budget of carbon compounds can be balanced only by invoking a significant 'missing sink' for carbon dioxide1–3. Identifying this sink requires a knowledge of CO2 fluxes at global and local scales. The former can be estimated from global averages of CO2 concentration and isotope composition4–9; local-scale measurements have been made by analysing individual eddies of air10,11. In both cases, the net CO2 exchange is the sum of two opposing fluxes: uptake by gross primary productivity and release by respiration. Here we show that these two components can be estimated separately at the local scale from small vertical gradients in 13C and 18O in atmospheric CO2 above vegetation. By also analysing the 18O content of moisture in the air samples, we can estimate evapotranspiration rates, providing information on water exchange between the biosphere and atmosphere12. We suggest that this approach can be extended to the regional scale.
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Yakir, D., Wang, XF. Fluxes of CO2 and water between terrestrial vegetation and the atmosphere estimated from isotope measurements. Nature 380, 515–517 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1038/380515a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/380515a0
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