Editorial: Impact of climate change on carbon sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems

Editorial on the Research Topic
Impact of climate change on carbon sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems

Globally, the terrestrial ecosystem is estimated to fix carbon through photosynthesis (i.e., gross primary production (GPP)) at a rate of 120–150 Pg C yr^-1. Approximately half of the GPP is respired by plants, with heterotrophic respiration estimated to be approximately 50–60 Pg C yr^-1 (He et al., 2022). The residual (net ecosystem exchange) is approximately 2–4 Pg C yr^-1 (Friedlingstein et al., 2025). Thus, although gross fluxes (i.e., photosynthesis and respiration) are enormous (in the hundreds of Pg C yr^-1), the net change in terrestrial carbon stocks is relatively small (a few Pg C yr⁻¹). This reflects a nearly balanced but dynamic “fast” carbon cycle on land, but also vulnerable terrestrial ecosystems: if respiration (due to warming or disturbance) increases more than uptake, the land could start to lose carbon rather than gain it. The Research Topic “Impact of Climate Change on Carbon Sequestration in Terrestrial Ecosystems” brings together a timely collection of studies that explore how ecosystems—including forests, wetlands, grasslands, and even urban green spaces—respond to climate- and land-use-driven changes and how these responses influence carbon storage and fluxes. These contributions underscore an urgent reality: the terrestrial carbon sink that humanity has long depended upon is changing—and may even reverse in some regions or under some conditions.

The aim of this Research Topic was to catalyze studies that examine not only the magnitude of carbon sequestration, but also how climate-driven factors (e.g., temperature, precipitation, CO₂ concentrations, plant phenology, extreme events, and land-use changes) alter the mechanisms of carbon uptake, storage, and loss. Specifically, this special issue includes four contributions ranging from detailed mechanisms studied at the site scale to the estimations of carbon sequestration at the city or regional scale, and the control of GPP at the global scale. All of the articles address environmental (and land use management) controls on C fluxes or storage. Together, these studies show the wide variety of controls on terrestrial carbon sequestration at different spatial scales.

The importance of temperature in controlling GPP is well established in boreal ecosystems. Recent studies have also highlighted a significant knowledge gap in the representation of phenology in ecosystem and global vegetation models. In this collection, He et al. show that spring phenology influences photosynthetic control in a boreal peatland ecosystem—highlighting how the timing of climate-driven changes impacts carbon capture. The so-called ‘winter brownification’ of shrubs in boreal peatlands is shown to regulate spring photosynthesis. The authors also suggest a new model scheme based on growing degree-day sum to incorporate spring phenology in calculating GPP, which can be widely used in global vegetation models.

This Research Topic emphasizes the growing importance of disturbances such as droughts, heatwaves, and compound extreme events. The article “Differential impacts of compound dry- and humid-hot events on global vegetation productivity” by Liu et al. illustrates how combinations of stressors can produce non-linear and sometimes unexpected responses in ecosystem productivity. Their data show that these extremes (compound dry- and humid-hot events) are becoming more frequent globally and substantially influence GPP. Land use changes play an important role in regulating the C dynamics. Chang et al. combine the PLUS and InVEST models to simulate the influence of land use on soil C in the Yellow River basin. Their model analysis shows large spatiotemporal variations in soil carbon storage in response to the future climate and land use management, highlighting the need to optimize land use structure and management for C sequestration.

Finally, Wang et al. present a study on soil carbon storage and influencing factors in an urban forest, a heavily managed system. The authors use data from field surveys and remote sensing. They find that tree diameter and plant community structure are positively correlated with carbon storage, providing important guidelines for urban forest development.

What emerges from this collection is not just academic interest, but policy-relevant insights. This special issue emphasizes that interventions (e.g., afforestation, reforestation, wetland restoration, and urban greening) cannot simply rely on planting trees and hoping for the best: the species mix, management regime, interaction with disturbance regimes, and local climate trajectory all matter. The modeling study in the Research Topic shows that choices regarding future pathways—such as land use, ecosystem management, and climate policy—will shape carbon sequestration outcomes. This collection continues that trajectory with mechanistic process studies, remote sensing, modeling, scenario analysis, and empirical case studies. However, the pace of climate change demands an even faster development of frameworks that can integrate across scales, from the microbial to the landscape level, and across disturbances. Therefore, integrating observations, models, and management across scales is essential to predict and sustain soil carbon sequestration under a changing climate.

Author contributions

HH: Writing – review and editing, Writing – original draft. BX: Writing – review and editing. YH: Writing – review and editing. XB: Writing – review and editing. CZ: Writing – review and editing.

Funding

The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.

Conflict of interest

The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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References

Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., et al. (2025). Global carbon budget 2024. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 17, 965–1039. doi:10.5194/essd-17-965-2025

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He, Y., Ding, J., Dorji, T., Wang, T., Li, J., and Smith, P. (2022). Observation-based global soil heterotrophic respiration indicates underestimated turnover and sequestration of soil carbon by terrestrial ecosystem models. Glob. Change Biol. 28 (18), 5547–5559. doi:10.1111/gcb.16286

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