Impact of climate change on grassland production and soil carbon worldwide

摘要

AbstractThe impact of climate change and increasing atmospheric CO2was modelled for 31 temperate and tropical grassland sites, using the CENTURY model. Climate change increased net primary production, except in cold desert steppe regions, and CO2increased production everywhere. Climate change caused soil carbon to decrease overall, with a loss of 4 Pg from global grasslands after 50 years. Combined climate change and elevated CO2increased production and reduced global grassland C losses to 2 Pg, with tropical savannas becoming small sinks for soil C. Detection of statistically significant change in plant production would require a 16 change in measured plant production because of high year to year variability in plant production. Most of the predicted changes in plant production are less than 10.