Abstract
Most tree species predominantly associate with a single type of mycorrhizal fungi, which can differentially affect plant nutrient acquisition and biogeochemical cycling. Uncertainties in mycorrhizal distributions are non-trivial, and current estimates disagree in up to 50% over 40% of the land area, including tropical forests. Remote sensing capabilities for mycorrhizal detection show promise for refining these estimates further. Here, we address for the first time the impact of mycorrhizal distributions on global carbon and nutrient cycling. Using the state-of-the-art carbon-nitrogen economics within the Community Land Model version 5, we found Net Primary Productivity (NPP) increased throughout the 21st century by 20%; however, as soil nitrogen has progressively become limiting, the costs to NPP for nitrogen acquisition—that is, to mycorrhizae—have increased at a faster rate by 60%. This suggests that nutrient acquisition will increasingly demand a higher portion of assimilated carbon to support the same productivity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e2021GL094514 |
| Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue number | 19 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2021 |
Funding
This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Terrestrial Ecosystem Science program under Award Numbers DE‐SC0008317 and DE‐SC0016188. Funding was also provided by the NASA IDS program. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved. MS was partly supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research as part of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program through the Next‐Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE) Tropics project. PNNL is operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the U.S. DOE under contract DE‐AC05‐76RLO1830. We would like to acknowledge high‐performance computing support from Cheyenne (NCAR, 2020 ) provided by NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Terrestrial Ecosystem Science program under Award Numbers DE-SC0008317 and DE-SC0016188. Funding was also provided by the NASA IDS program. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved. MS was partly supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research as part of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program through the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE) Tropics project. PNNL is operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the U.S. DOE under contract DE-AC05-76RLO1830. We would like to acknowledge high-performance computing support from Cheyenne (NCAR,?2020) provided by NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
Keywords
- Earth system modeling
- biogeochemistry
- carbon cycling
- climate change
- mycorrhizae
- nitrogen cycling