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Terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP) varies greatly over time and space. A better understanding of this variability is necessary for more accurate predictions of the future climate–carbon cycle feedback. Recent studies have suggested that variability in GPP is driven by a broad range of biotic and abiotic factors operating mainly through changes in vegetation phenology and physiological processes. However, it is still unclear how plant phenology and physiology can be integrated to explain the spatiotemporal variability of terrestrial GPP. Based on analyses of eddy–covariance and satellite-derived data, we decomposed annual terrestrial GPP into the length of the CO2 uptake period (CUP) and the seasonal maximal capacity of CO2 uptake (GPPmax). The product of CUP and GPPmax explained >90% of the temporal GPP variability in most areas of North America during 2000–2010 and the spatial GPP variation among globally distributed eddy flux tower sites. It also explained GPP response to the European heatwave in 2003 (r2 = 0.90) and GPP recovery after a fire disturbance in South Dakota (r2 = 0.88). Additional analysis of the eddy–covariance flux data shows that the interbiome variation in annual GPP is better explained by that in GPPmax than CUP. These findings indicate that terrestrial GPP is jointly controlled by ecosystem-level plant phenology and photosynthetic capacity, and greater understanding of GPPmax and CUP responses to environmental and biological variations will, thus, improve predictions of GPP over time and space.

The fixation of carbon in tropical forests mainly occurs through the production of wood and leaves, both being the principal components of net primary production. Currently field and satellite observations are independently used to describe the forest carbon cycle, but the link between satellite-derived forest phenology and field-derived forest productivity remains opaque. We used a unique combination of a MODIS EVI dataset, a climate-explicit wood production model and direct litterfall observations at an intra-annual time scale in order to question the synchronism of leaf and wood production in tropical forests. Even though leaf and wood biomass fluxes had the same range (respectively 2.4 ± 1.4 Mg C ha?1yr?1 and 2.2 ± 0.4 Mg C ha?1yr?1), they occured separately in time. EVI increased with the magnitude of leaf renewal at the beginning of the dry season when solar irradiance was at its maximum. At this time, wood production stopped. At the onset of the rainy season when new leaves were fully mature and water available again, wood production quickly increased to reach its maximum in less than a month, reflecting a change in carbon allocation from short lived pools (leaves) to long lived pools (wood). The time lag between peaks of EVI and wood production (109 days) revealed a substantial decoupling between the irradiance-driven leaf renewal and the water-driven wood production. Our work is a first attempt to link EVI data, wood production and leaf phenology at a seasonal time scale in a tropical evergreen rainforest and pave the way to develop more sophisticated global carbon cycle models in tropical forests.