Constraining size-dependence of vegetation respiration rates

Plant autotrophic respiration is responsible for the atmospheric release of about half of all photosynthetically fixed carbon and responds to climate change in a manner different from photosynthesis. The plant mass-specific respiration rate (r(A)), a key parameter of the carbon cycle, has not been sufficiently constrained by observations at ecosystem or broader scales. In this study, a meta-analysis revealed a global relationship with vegetation biomass that explains 67–77% of the variance of r(A) across plant ages and biomes. r(A) decreased with increasing vegetation biomass such that annual r(A) was two orders of magnitude larger in fens and deserts than in mature forests. This relationship can be closely approximated by a power-law equation with a universal exponent and yields an estimated global autotrophic respiration rate of 64 ± 12 Pg C yr(−1). This finding, which is phenomenologically and theoretically consistent with metabolic scaling and plant demography, provides a way to constrain the carbon-cycle components of Earth system models.