Former postdoc Drew Peltier’s paper, “Decades-old carbon reserves are widespread among tree species, constrained only by sapwood longevity,” which uses a model-based approach to investigate how the distribution, mixing, and turnover of reserves vary across trees and species, has been just been published. Using data from 9 different species, Drew’s analysis shows that deep mixing and rapid turnover indicate that most photosynthate is rapidly metabolized. But, results also indicate that ecological variation in reserve ages is enormous, perhaps driven by stress and disturbance. Across all species, maximum reserve ages appear primarily constrained by sapwood longevity, and thus old reserves are probably widespread.
