Research Progress in Responses of Modern Terrestrial Plant Carbon Isotope Composition to Climate Change |
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| Authors: | Liu Xianzhao Zhang Yong Su Qing Tian Yanlin Quan Bin Wang Guoan |
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| Institution: | 1.College of Architecture and Urban Planning,Hunan University of Science and Technology,Xiangtan 411201,China; 2. State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture,Institute of Soil Science,CAS,Nanjing 210008,China; 3. College of Life Science, Hunan University of Science and Technology,Xiangtan 411201,China; 4. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China |
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| Abstract: | Global climate change has been one of the most concerned environmental problems in the world since the 1980s. Since stable carbon composition (13C) in plant tissues can record abundant information on climate changes, it has been widely used as an important climate proxy in global change studies and becomes a powerful tool for obtaining paleoclimate information, understanding paleoenvironment reconstruction and modern climate change, and predicting future climate trends. However, a lot of potential uncertainties have always involved in the reconstruction of paleoclimate and paleoenvironment by carbon isotope of the past period sediment or fossils. Among them, the most dominant uncertainty is due to our poor understanding of the relations between carbon isotope ratios of plants and climatic factors and the climatic and environmental significance indicated by modern plant 13C. This may limit the application of plant 13C in the study of climatic and environmental changes. Based on the Summary of plant 13C fractionation and carbon isotope distribution of different photosynthetic plants, the effects of environmental factors, e.g., temperature, precipitation, atmospheric CO2 concentration, and altitude on terrestrial plant 13C and their relationships were reviewed in this paper, and the response mechanism of plant 13C to climate changes were also analyzed. Furthermore, the current existing problems and the future prospects in carbon isotope study were discussed. It is pointed out that strengthening some studies such as the response of C4 plants 13C to climate environmental parameters, the transformation relation of different scale plant 13C, intersection and permeation of related disciplines, and various proxies and scientific method, will undoubtedly make us have a more accurate understanding of the climate history and eventually broaden the development of the field during the process of global change study by plant carbon isotope techniques. |
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| Keywords: | Carbon isotope Paleoclimate reconstruction Global change Climatic and environmental factors |
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