Data for: Biogeographic pattern of living vegetation carbon turnover time in mature forests across continents

Aim: Theoretically, woody biomass turnover time (τ) quantified using outflux (i.e., tree mortality) predicts biomass dynamics better than using influx (i.e., productivity). This study aims at using forest inventory data to empirically test the outflux approach and generate a spatially explicit understanding of woody τ in mature forests. We further compared woody τ estimates with dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) and with a data assimilation product of C stocks and fluxes - CARDAMOM.
Location: Continents
Time period: Historic from 1951 to 2018
Major taxa studied: Trees and Forests
Methods: We compared the approaches of using outflux vs. influx for estimating woody τ and predicting biomass accumulation rates. We investigated abiotic and biotic drivers of spatial woody τ and generated a spatially explicit map of woody τ at a 0.25-degree resolution across continents using machine learning. We further examined whether six DGVMs and CARDAMOM generally captured the observational pattern..., ,