资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The terrestrial carbon sink has significantly increased in the past decades, but the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. The current synthesis of process-based estimates of land and ocean sinks requires an additional sink of 0.6鈥塒gC yr^鈭? in the last decade to explain the observed airborne fraction. A concurrent global fire decline was observed in association with tropical agriculture expansion and landscape fragmentation. Here we show that a decline of 0.2鈥壜扁€?.1鈥塒gC yr^鈭? in fire emissions during 2008鈥?014 relative to 2001鈥?007 also induced an additional carbon sink enhancement of 0.4鈥壜扁€?.2鈥塒gC yr^鈭? attributable to carbon cycle feedbacks, amounting to a combined sink increase comparable to the 0.6鈥塒gC yr^鈭? budget imbalance. Our results suggest that the indirect effects of fire, in addition to the direct emissions, is an overlooked mechanism for explaining decadal-scale changes in the land carbon sink and highlight the importance of fire management in climate mitigation.