The ecosystem carbon cycle of a forest plot in Wytham Woods

We have just published a description of the productive and carbon cycle of a plot in our local Wytham Woods research site. This is work emerging from the DPhil thesis of Katie Fenn. The work shows that the plot takes up 22 tonnes of carbon every year through photosynthesis, but less than 10% of this ends up as wood growth. Much more productivity ends up in the leaf canopy and even in fine roots. This is one of the few full descriptions anywhere of carbon cycling in mixed-age temperate broadleaf woodland (most work is on either plantations or coniferous forests), and forms part of our Global Ecosystems Monitoring network GEM. We also show how well our bottom-up carbon cycle measures track the eddy covariance measurements of total canopy CO2 exchange, giving increased confidence in both. 

The paper can be accessed here:
Fenn, K., Malhi, Y., Morecroft, M., Lloyd, C. and Thomas, M. (2014) The carbon cycle of a maritime ancient temperate broadleaved woodland at seasonal and annual Scales. Ecosystems, 10.1007/s10021-014-9793-1. Supplementary info.

The eddy covariance work is described in detail in a previous study:
Thomas, M. V., Malhi, Y., Fenn, K. M., Fisher, J. B., Morecroft, M. D., Lloyd, C. R., Taylor, M. E., and McNeil, D. D (2011).: Carbon dioxide fluxes over an ancient broadleaved deciduous woodland in southern England, Biogeosciences, 8, 1595-1613, doi:10.5194/bg-8-1595-2011.