Global 1km forest woody residence time of 2004

Carbon turnover time (τw) is an important parameter indicating the balance between growth and death in mature forests. By collecting empirical data from the literature, we explored the global forest τw values and studied their impact on the simulation of above-ground biomass (AGB) models on a global scale. Based on the collected empirical data, we used precipitation, total primary productivity, temperature, DEM, and evapotranspiration as predictors and applied the random forest method to generate global τw values with a 1 km resolution. The estimation results indicate that the average global forest τw value is 66.7 years, with significant spatial heterogeneity. For current DGVMs or Earth system models, this τw distribution map can help improve model simulations and reduce the uncertainty of parameter predictions for future AGB.