Carbon allocation in forest ecosystems

Abstract Carbon allocation plays a critical role in forest ecosystem carbon cycling. We reviewed existing literature and compiled annual carbon budgets for forest ecosystems to test a series of hypotheses addressing the patterns, plasticity, and limits of three components of allocation: biomass , the amount of material present; flux , the flow of carbon to a component per unit time; and partitioning , the fraction of gross primary productivity (GPP) used by a component. Can annual carbon flux and partitioning be inferred from biomass ? Our survey revealed that biomass was poorly related to carbon flux and to partitioning of photosynthetically derived carbon, and should not be used to infer either. Are…