Jornada researchers Laureano Gherardi and Osvaldo Sala recently published a new paper in PNAS. For the first time, they were able to calculate global Belowground Net Primary Production (BNPP), 24 Pg yr-1. Globally, BNPP accounted for 46% of global Net Primary Production. The paper highlights a novel approach to calculating global belowground productivity and fixed carbon across biomes. Their approach is also used to further understand how belowground carbon productivity would respond to climate and land-use change. The publication can be found at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2006715117.
Fig. 4. Geographical patterns of BNPP and the fraction of productivity allocated belowground. (A) Global BNPP geographical patterns across major biomes. (B) Global F-BNPP patterns across major biomes. BNPP and F-BNPP were estimated using the best-fitting model after testing combinations of 10 climatic variables and precipitation by temperature interactions (SI Appendix, Tables S1 and S2).