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Many short-term experiments have been conducted under increasing CO2 but results have been varied and have not yet led to a conclusive quantitative understanding of the CO2 response of plant growth. This may have been partly due to a lack of explicit consideration of the positive feedback inherent in plant growth during periods of exponential growth. This feedback can increase an initial physiological enhancement of relative growth rate (RGR) into a much larger biomass enhancement. To overcome this problem, we re-analysed existing experimental data from 78 publications. We calculated the RGRs of C3 plants and their relative enhancement under elevated CO2 and derived response indices that were independent of the duration of experiments and the RGR at normal atmospheric CO2. The RGR of unstressed plants increased by 14±2% under doubled CO2, with observed RGR enhancement linearly correlated with calculated photosynthetic enhancements (based on the Farquhar-von Caemmerer-Berry photosynthesis model), but at only half their numeric values. Calculated RGR enhancements did not change significantly for temperatures from 12 to 40°C, but were reduced under nutrient limitation, and were increased under water stress or low irradiance. We concluded that short-term experiments can offer simple and cost-effective insights into plant CO2 responses, provided they are analysed by calculating relative changes in RGR during the strictly exponential initial growth phase.

A recent study by Keppler et al. (2006; Nature 439, 187-191) demonstrated CH 4 emission from living and dead plant tissues under aerobic conditions. This work included some calculations to extrapolate the findings from the laboratory to the global scale and led various commentators to question the value of planting trees as a greenhouse mitigation option. The experimental work of Keppler et al. (2006) appears to be largely sound, although some concerns remain about the quantification of emission rates. However, whilst accepting their basic findings, we are critical of the method used for extrapolating results to a global scale. Using the same basic information, we present alternative calculations to estimate global aerobic plant CH 4 emissions as 10-60 Mt CH 4 year -1 . This estimate is much smaller than the 62-236 Mt CH 4 year -1 reported in the original study and can be more readily reconciled within the uncertainties in the established sources and sinks in the global CH 4 budget. We also assessed their findings in terms of their possible relevance for planting trees as a greenhouse mitigation option. We conclude that consideration of aerobic CH 4 emissions from plants would reduce the benefit of planting trees by between 0 and 4.4%. Hence, any offset from CH 4 emission is small in comparison to the significant benefit from carbon sequestration. However, much critical information is still lacking about aerobic CH 4 emission from plants. For example, we do not yet know the underlying mechanism for aerobic CH 4 emission, how CH 4 emissions change with light, temperature and the physiological state of leaves, whether emissions change over time under constant conditions, whether they are related to photosynthesis and how they relate to the chemical composition of biomass. Therefore, the present calculations must be seen as a preliminary attempt to assess the global significance from a basis of limited information and are likely to be revised as further information becomes available.

Net primary production links the biosphere and the climate system through the global cycling of carbon, water and nutrients. Accurate quantification of net primary productivity (NPP) is therefore critical in understanding the response of the world's ecosystems to global climate change, and how changes in ecosystems might themselves feed back to the climate system.

To grow, plants need both carbon, which is fixed in photosynthesis, and inorganic nutrients, which are generally obtained from the soil. Much interest currently exists in trying to understand the uptake and storage of carbon by terrestrial ecosystems. This paper investigates to what extent carbon gain and storage are modified by soil nutrient availability. This issue is investigated in relation to both short-term carbon fluxes on the time scale of interannual variability and long-term ecosystem carbon stocks on time scales of several thousand years.We conclude from simulations with an ecosystem model (CenW) that interannual variations in carbon gain can be significantly affected by feedback effects through the nutrient cycle. This feedback effect operates principally through an imbalance between carbon and nutrient dynamics. In years that allow high carbon gain, nutrient supply typically does not match the increased carbon supply so that foliar nutrient concentrations are reduced. This lowers productivity below that which could be expected if foliar nutrient concentration remained the same. The importance of these feedback effects is shown to be greatest at intermediate levels of water availability and nutrient supply, and is relatively more important for net ecosystem carbon exchange than for net primary production.We conclude that the long-term build-up of carbon stocks in ecosystems is often controlled by the rate at which nutrients can be gained. This conclusion is based on data from published studies showing that the slow build-up of carbon matches the gain in nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur, and on our simulations of system carbon stocks in response to fertiliser addition.The paper concludes with a discussion of the importance and feasibility of including these processes into models at different scales, including the broad continental scale. For modelling net ecosystem exchange for Australia, it is regarded as feasible and desirable to use models that are constrained by these system-internal feedback effects. Such models have already been used for large-scale simulations in Australia and other countries.