For decades, the Earth's land surface has provided a vital service, absorbing a significant portion of anthropogenic carbon emissions. This "land carbon sink" has been a major focus of scientific inquiry, though its exact magnitude and trend have been subject to conflicting conclusions.

 

A new paper by Liu et al., spearheaded by the Western Geographic Science Center, addresses this ambiguity by integrating real-world observations into a complex carbon cycle model. Using data-driven simulations of the carbon cycle, the research team found that the land sink in the conterminous US peaked in the 1990s and has been weakening ever since.

 

For more information on the study finding, please access the open access paper here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx7823

 

Dr. Jinxun Liu is a Research Ecologist with the Western Geographic Science Center at Moffett Field, CA. His research interests and expertise are closely related to system ecology and ecosystem simulation models.