Adding Tree Rings to North America's National Forest Inventories: An Essential Tool to Guide Drawdown of Atmospheric CO2.

Tree-ring time series provide long-term, annually resolved information on the growth of trees. When sampled in a systematic context, tree-ring data can be scaled to estimate the forest carbon capture and storage of landscapes, biomes, and-ultimately-the globe. A systematic effort to sample tree rings in national forest inventories would yield unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution of forest carbon dynamics and help resolve key scientific uncertainties, which we highlight in terms of evidence for forest greening (enhanced growth) versus browning (reduced growth, increased mortality).

Precipitation alters the CO effect on water-use efficiency of temperate forests.

Increasing water-use efficiency (WUE), the ratio of carbon gain to water loss, is a key mechanism that enhances carbon uptake by terrestrial vegetation under rising atmospheric CO (c ). Existing theory and empirical evidence suggest a proportional WUE increase in response to rising c as plants maintain a relatively constant ratio between the leaf intercellular (c ) and ambient (c ) partial CO pressure (c /c ). This has been hypothesized as the main driver of the strengthening of the terrestrial carbon sink over the recent decades.

North American temperate conifer (Tsuga canadensis) reveals a complex physiological response to climatic and anthropogenic stressors.

Rising atmospheric CO (c) is expected to promote tree growth and lower water loss via changes in leaf gas exchange. However, uncertainties remain if gas-exchange regulation strategies are homeostatic or dynamical in response to increasing c, as well as evolving climate and pollution inputs. Using a suite of tree ring-based δC-derived physiological parameters (ΔC, c, iWUE) and tree growth from a mesic, low elevation stand of canopy-dominant Tsuga canadensis in north-eastern USA, we investigated the influence of rising c, climate and pollution on, and characterised the dynamical regulation strategy of, leaf gas exchange at multidecadal scales.

The surprising recovery of red spruce growth shows links to decreased acid deposition and elevated temperature.

Following growth declines and increased mortality linked to acid deposition-induced calcium depletion, red spruce (Picea rubens Sarg.) in the northeastern United States are experiencing a recovery. We found that more than 75% of red spruce trees and 90% of the plots examined in this study exhibited increasing growth since 2001.