Cited by 504Plant Water Relations and Carbon DynamicsRemote Sensing in AgricultureLand Use and Ecosystem Services

Vegetation structural change since 1981 significantly enhanced the terrestrial carbon sink

Open access
Chen, Jing M., Ju, Weimin, Ciais, Philippe, Viovy, Nicolas, Liu, Ronggao, Liu, Yang, Lu, Xuehe·2019·Nature Communications

Abstract

Abstract Satellite observations show that leaf area index (LAI) has increased globally since 1981, but the impact of this vegetation structural change on the global terrestrial carbon cycle has not been systematically evaluated. Through process-based diagnostic ecosystem modeling, we find that the increase in LAI alone was responsible for 12.4% of the accumulated terrestrial carbon sink (95 ± 5 Pg C) from 1981 to 2016, whereas other drivers of CO 2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, and climate change (temperature, radiation, and precipitation) contributed to 47.0%, 1.1%, and −28.6% of the sink, respectively. The legacy effects of past changes in these drivers prior to 1981 are responsible for the remaining 65.5% of the accumulated sink from 1981 to 2016. These results refine the attribution of the land sink to the various drivers and would help constrain prognostic models that often have large uncertainties in simulating changes in vegetation and their impacts on the global carbon cycle.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/s41467-019-12257-8

Cites

49 of 49 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Carbon sink estimation is complex, and results from many models differ considerably.

    “Its estimation is complex, and results from many models differ considerably.346”

    From Technologies and perspectives for achieving carbon neutrality (2021) · cites this paper as [346]

  • Many current models cannot effectively simulate the natural and human factors influencing the carbon cycle and estimate the carbon sink.

    “Many current models cannot effectively simulate these factors and estimate the C sink.”

    From Technologies and perspectives for achieving carbon neutrality (2021) · cites this paper as [346]

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [43]Chen, J. M. in Comprehensive Remote Sensing, Vol. 3 (ed. Liang, S.) Pages 53–77, ISBN 9780128032213, 10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10540-82018 (Elsevier, Oxford, 2017). · DOI

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Chen, J. M., Ju, W., Ciais, P., Viovy, N., Liu, R., Liu, Y., & Lu, X.
Affiliations
  • University of Toronto (CA)
  • Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application (CN)
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
  • Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
  • Nanjing University (CN)
Corresponding author
Ju, Weimin
Venue
Nature Communications
Published
2019-09-18
Volume
10
Issue
1
Pages
4259-4259
ISSN
2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2973497171
Cited by
492
References
49
Citations by year
2026: 50 · 2025: 89 · 2024: 119 · 2023: 93 · 2022: 75 · 2021: 41 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 3
FWCI
18.14
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Key R&D Program of China
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Remote Sensing in Agriculture
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
Keywords
terrestrial carbon sink, leaf area index, CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, legacy effects, carbon cycle, satellite remote sensing of vegetation, ecosystem modeling

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review