Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere

Wickland, and S. Wofsy. 1996. The Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA). Concise Experimental Plan. Compiled by the LBA Science Planning Group. Staring Center-DLO, Wageningen, The Netherlands. 

An investigation of VOCs over the tropical rainforest of Surinam by Crutzen and colleagues was the first time a PTR-MS instrument had been employed in flight [6-8]. This work was carried out as part of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere experiment in... 

Two sets of data are given to illustrate how different researchers have arrived at different figures this is because definitions of biome types vary. Note that wetlands were examined in Section 4.5 and croplands are discussed in Section 6.2. It must also be noted that the living components of the Earth s biomes contribute to carbon flows other than those related to the large scale biosphere - atmosphere exchanges etc. These include the provision of medicines, fibres, perfumes, foods and biomass fuels. 

Insight into the controls of atmospheric CO2 levels is provided by the sizes and turnover times of the different carbon reservoirs. Lithospheric processes control atmospheric CO2 variations on time scales of millions of years. With its large carbon inventory and air-sea fluxes, the oceanic processes dominate atmospheric CO2 variations on millennial time scales. On seasonal to interannual time scales, the terrestrial biosphere must play the leading role. 

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