A. David McGuire David W. Kicklighter Todd J. Burnside Jerry M. Melillo Daniel J. Hayes 2010 <p><span>Recent changes in climate, disturbance regimes and land use and management systems in Northern Eurasia have the potential to disrupt the terrestrial sink of atmospheric CO</span>₂<span> in a way that accelerates global climate change. To determine the recent trends in the carbon balance of the arctic and boreal ecosystems of this region, we performed a retrospective analysis of terrestrial carbon dynamics across northern Eurasia over a recent 10-year period using a terrestrial biogeochemical process model. The results of the simulations suggest a shift in direction of the net flux from the terrestrial sink of earlier decades to a net source on the order of 45 Tg C year</span>⁻¹<span>between 1997 and 2006. The simulation framework and subsequent analyses presented in this study attribute this shift to a large loss of carbon from boreal forest ecosystems, which experienced a trend of decreasing precipitation and a large area burned during this time period.</span></p> application/pdf 10.1007/978-90-481-9118-5_6 en Springer Netherlands The effects of land cover and land use change on the contemporary carbon balance of the arctic and boreal terrestrial ecosystems of northern Eurasia chapter