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Bias in the attribution of forest carbon sinks

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A substantial fraction of the terrestrial carbon sink, past and present, may be incorrectly attributed to environmental change rather than changes in forest management.

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Figure 1: Model-based reconstruction of carbon flows and stocks in Austria's forests from 1830–2000.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the EU-FP7 project VOLANTE (265104), by the ERC Grants 263522 and 242564, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project P20812-G11, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the proVISION programme of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and the Einstein Siftung Berlin. Comments by Jed O. Kaplan helped to improve the manuscript. This research contributes to the Global Land Project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Ecology Vienna (SEC), Alpen-Adria Universitaet Klagenfurt, Wien, Graz, Schottenfeldgasse 29, Vienna, 1070, Austria

    Karl-Heinz Erb, Thomas Kastner & Helmut Haberl

  2. LSCE CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Orme des Merisiers, F-91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Sebastiaan Luyssaert

  3. Woods Hole Research Center, 149 Woods Hole Road, Falmouth, 02540, MA, USA

    Richard A. Houghton

  4. Geography Department, Humboldt-University Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin, 10099, Germany

    Tobias Kuemmerle

  5. Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research,

    Tobias Kuemmerle

  6. Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, 02215, MA, USA

    Pontus Olofsson

Authors
  1. Karl-Heinz Erb
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  2. Thomas Kastner
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  3. Sebastiaan Luyssaert
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  4. Richard A. Houghton
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  5. Tobias Kuemmerle
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  6. Pontus Olofsson
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  7. Helmut Haberl
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karl-Heinz Erb.

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Erb, KH., Kastner, T., Luyssaert, S. et al. Bias in the attribution of forest carbon sinks. Nature Clim Change 3, 854–856 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2004

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