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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Environmental Science
  • Biogeochemistry

Background:

  • Ecosystems are interconnected through material transport, but the significance of these spatial flows for local functioning is not well understood.
  • Carbon is a key element exchanged between ecosystems, influencing their structure and processes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To quantitatively synthesize global spatial carbon flows between ecosystems.
  • To compare the magnitude of cross-ecosystem carbon flows with local ecosystem fluxes.
  • To assess the varying dependencies on spatial flows across different ecosystem types.

Main Methods:

  • Global quantitative synthesis of published data on carbon fluxes.
  • Analysis of spatial carbon flow magnitudes across diverse ecosystem types.
  • Comparison of cross-ecosystem flow rates with local ecosystem processes.

Main Results:

  • Spatial carbon flows vary over eight orders of magnitude globally (10^-3 to 10^5 gC m^-2 year^-1).
  • Cross-ecosystem flows are comparable to local fluxes in freshwater and benthic ecosystems.
  • Terrestrial ecosystems show lower relative dependency on spatial carbon flows (2-3 orders of magnitude less than local fluxes).

Conclusions:

  • Ecosystem functioning is significantly influenced by spatial carbon flows, with varying importance across ecosystem types.
  • Freshwater and benthic ecosystems exhibit strong coupling to spatial carbon inputs.
  • All ecosystems are vulnerable to disturbances affecting cross-ecosystem material transport, necessitating a spatial perspective in ecological studies.