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Changing ecophysiological processes and carbon budget in East Asian ecosystems under near-future changes in climate: implications for long-term monitoring from a process-based model

  • JPR Symposium
  • Carbon cycle process in East Asia
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Abstract

Using a process-based model, I assessed how ecophysiological processes would respond to near-future global changes predicted by coupled atmosphere–ocean climate models. An ecosystem model, Vegetation Integrative SImulator for Trace gases (VISIT), was applied to four sites in East Asia (different types of forest in Takayama, Tomakomai, and Fujiyoshida, Japan, and an Alpine grassland in Qinghai, China) where observational flux data are available for model calibration. The climate models predicted +1–3°C warming and slight change in annual precipitation by 2050 as a result of an increase in atmospheric CO2. Gross primary production (GPP) was estimated to increase substantially at each site because of improved efficiency in the use of water and radiation. Although increased respiration partly offset the GPP increase, the simulation showed that these ecosystems would act as net carbon sinks independent of disturbance-induced uptake for recovery. However, the carbon budget response relied strongly on nitrogen availability, such that photosynthetic down-regulation resulting from leaf nitrogen dilution largely decreased GPP. In relation to long-term monitoring, these results indicate that the impacts of global warming may be more evident in gross fluxes (e.g., photosynthesis and respiration) than in the net CO2 budget, because changes in these fluxes offset each other.

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Acknowledgments

This study was partly supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (no. 19310017) and from the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (no. 21114010). This is a contribution to the A3 Foresight Program “Quantifying and predicting terrestrial carbon sinks in East Asia: toward a network of climate change research”.

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  1. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Onogawa 16-2, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506, Japan

    Akihiko Ito

  2. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Kanagawa, Japan

    Akihiko Ito

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Correspondence to Akihiko Ito.

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Ito, A. Changing ecophysiological processes and carbon budget in East Asian ecosystems under near-future changes in climate: implications for long-term monitoring from a process-based model. J Plant Res 123, 577–588 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-009-0305-x

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