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This table provides, for each of the 403 species used in our analysis, various documentary information as well as the fitted parameters for the relationship between mass growth rate and the natural log of tree size. The independent variable ln(mass) was divided into bins and a separate line segment was fitted to mass growth rate versus ln(mass) in each bin so that the line segments met at the bin divisions. Mass and growth rate were in megagrams (Mg) and Mg yr-1 respectively. Bin divisions were not assigned a priori but were fitted by the model separately for each species. We fitted models with 1, 2, 3, and 4 bins, and selected the model receiving the most support by Akaike’s Information Criterion for each species....
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Forests sequester the majority of the terrestrial biosphere’s carbon and are key components of the global carbon cycle, potentially contributing substantial feedbacks to ongoing climatic changes. It is therefore remarkable that no consensus yet exists about the fundamental nature of tree mass growth (and thus carbon sequestration rate). Specifically, does tree mass growth rate increase, decrease, or stay the same with increasing tree size? The answer could have profound implications for our ability to forecast the role of forests in the global carbon cycle and to devise appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies for forests in the face of rapid climatic changes. We will conduct the first global-scale characterization...
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Forests are major components of the global carbon cycle, providing substantial feedback to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations . Our ability to understand and predict changes in the forest carbon cycle--particularly net primary productivity and carbon storage--increasingly relies on models that represent biological processes across several scales of biological organization, from tree leaves to forest stands. Yet, despite advances in our understanding of productivity at the scales of leaves and stands, no consensus exists about the nature of productivity at the scale of the individual tree , in part because we lack a broad empirical assessment of whether rates of absolute tree mass growth (and thus carbon accumulation)...
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