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Land use and land cover change has led to more frequent hot, dry summers in parts of the mid-latitudes. Here the authors use an Earth system model to show that regions converted to crops and pastures experience hot, dry summers 2 to 4 times more frequently than they would if native forests had remained.

Two studies show how different tree species affect both carbon storage and local temperatures.

Nitrogen and phosphorus limitations are both key to spatial patterns and temporal trends in primary production. This global analysis indicates that phosphorus limitation on terrestrial primary productivity has become stronger and is increasing more rapidly than nitrogen limitation.

Forest structural diversity is positively associated with forest resilience in about 80% of Southern and Central European forests, implying that increasing canopy complexity may offset warming-driven declines in resilience, based on an analysis of remote sensing data and random forest modelling.

Eddy-covariance observations suggest that rain pulses over global drylands drive substantial soil carbon emissions, which are underestimated in current measurement and modelling approaches.

A global survey on the magnitude and persistence of moist forest cover change and canopy height following degradation using satellite remote sensing data finds that the effects are substantial and persist for decades.

Atmospheric deposition of nitrogen can, but does not always, speed up the sequestration of carbon in trees and forest soil. This complexity may arise from the spatial variations in each of the three mechanisms by which nitrogen affects carbon storage.

It is unclear whether trait trade-offs and optimality principles observed at the individual level scale up to the ecosystem level. Here, the authors show that plant trait coordination principles also predict patterns between community-level traits and ecosystem-scale processes.

The authors test for temperature dependency of ecosystem respiration rates across globally distributed eddy covariance sites, revealing consistent temperature thresholds where ecosystem metabolism changes.

Natural disturbances imperil healthy and productive forests, but quantifying their effects at large scales is challenging. Here the authors apply machine learning to disturbance records and satellite data to quantify and map European forest vulnerability to fires, windthrows, and insect outbreaks through 1979-2018.

Global shifts in human–forest relationships from 1975 to 2020 are unevenly distributed, highlighting critical ecological stress in tropical regions and the urgent need for targeted interventions, based on a new index, Forest Human Nexus, indicating spatial human–forest interactions.

Many models assume a universal carbon use efficiency across forest biomes, in contrast to assumptions of other process-based models. Here the authors analyse forest production efficiency across a wide range of climates to show a positive relationship with annual temperature and precipitation, indicating that ecosystem models are overestimating forest carbon losses under warming.

Climate change is expected to intensify the global hydrological cycle and to alter evapotranspiration, but direct observational constraints are lacking at the global scale. Now a data-driven, machine-learning technique and a suite of process-based models have been used to show that from 1982 to 1997 global evapotranspiration increased by about 7.1 millimetres per year per decade. But since 1998 this increase has ceased, probably because of moisture limitation in the Southern Hemisphere.

The model–inventory discrepancy in net land-use carbon emissions mainly results from conceptual differences in estimating anthropogenic forest sinks. A revised disaggregation of global land model results allows greater comparability with inventories.

The sensitivity of ecosystem respiration to seasonal changes in temperature is shown to be remarkably similar for a wide range of ecosystem types spanning the globe; however, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems differ markedly in their temperature sensitivity over annual timescales.

The photosynthetic capacity of forest ecosystems is an important variable in the global carbon cycle. Here, it is shown that older, more diverse forests have less fluctuation between years in photosynthetic capacity.

Three key axes of variation of ecosystem functional changes and their underlying causes are identified from a dataset of surface gas exchange measurements across major terrestrial biomes and climate zones.

Wetland methane emissions contribute to global warming, and are oversimplified in climate models. Here the authors use eddy covariance measurements from 48 global sites to demonstrate seasonal hysteresis in methane-temperature relationships and suggest the importance of microbial processes.

Actionable research recommendations are outlined to improve the monitoring and modelling of forest resources and their carbon sink, and to better inform forest management decisions and the European Green Deal.

Combining eddy covariance measurements and satellite observations, the authors identify an optimum air temperature for global vegetation productivity and show that it is consistently lower than the optimum foliar photosynthetic capacity.

European forests are intensively exploited for wood products, yet they are also a potential sink for carbon. European forest inventories combined with timber harvest statistics from sixteen European countries show that between 1950 and 2000 forest biomass increased faster than the amount of timber harvests. Silviculture, which has developed over the past 50 years, can efficiently sequester carbon on timescales of decades, while maintaining forests that meet the demand for wood.

Protected areas are effective in preserving the height and vertical structure of European forests, according to an analysis of spaceborne data from the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation.

Land and ocean carbon sinks play a critical role in determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Nitrogen-induced increases in land and ocean sink strength are unlikely to keep pace with future increases in carbon dioxide.