Forest response to elevated CO₂ is conserved across a broad range of productivity

Climate change predictions derived from coupled carbon-climate models are highly dependent on assumptions about feedbacks between the biosphere and atmosphere. One critical feedback occurs if C uptake by the biosphere increases in response to the fossil-fuel driven increase in atmospheric [CO₂] ("CO₂ fertilization"), thereby slowing the rate of increase in atmospheric [CO₂]. Carbon exchanges between the terrestrial biosphere and atmosphere are often first represented in models as net primary productivity (NPP). However, the contribution of CO₂ fertilization to the future global C cycle has been uncertain, especially in forest ecosystems that dominate global NPP, and models that include a feedback between terrestrial biosphere metabolism and atmospheric [CO₂] are poorly constrained by experimental evidence. We analyzed the response of NPP to elevated CO ₂ (≈550 ppm) in four free-air CO₂ enrichment experiments in forest stands. We show that the response of forest NPP to elevated [CO₂] is highly conserved across a broad range of productivity, with a stimulation at the median of 23 ± 2%. At low leaf area indices, a large portion of the response was attributable to increased light absorption, but as leaf area indices increased, the response to elevated [CO₂] was wholly caused by increased light-use efficiency. The surprising consistency of response across diverse sites provides a benchmark to evaluate predictions of ecosystem and global models and allows us now to focus on unresolved questions about carbon partitioning and retention, and spatial variation in NPP response caused by availability of other growth limiting resources.