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We determine the net land to atmosphere flux of carbon in Russia, including Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, using inventory-based, eddy covariance, and inversionmethods. Our high boundary estimate is-342 Tg C yr-1 from the eddy covariance method, and this is close to the upper bounds of the inventory-based Land Ecosystem Assessment and inverse models estimates. A lower boundary estimate is provided at -1350 Tg C yr-1 from the inversion models. The average of the three methods is -613.5 Tg C yr-1. The methane emission is estimated separately at 41.4 Tg C yr-1. These three methods agree well within their respective error bounds. There is thus good consistency between bottom-up and top-down methods. The forests of Russia primarily cause the net atmosphere to land flux (-692 Tg C yr-1 from the LEA. It remains however remarkable that the three methods provide such close estimates (-615, -662, -554 Tg C yr-1) for net biome production (NBP), given the inherent uncertainties in all of the approaches. The lack of recent forest inventories, the few eddy covariance sites and associated uncertainty with upscaling and undersampling of concentrations for the inversions are among the prime causes of the uncertainty. The dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) suggest a much lower uptake at -91 Tg C yr-1, and we argue that this is caused by a high estimate of heterotrophic respiration compared to other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Steppe ecosystems represent an interesting case in which the assessment of carbon balance may be performed through a cross validation of the eddy covariance measurements against ecological inventory estimates of carbon exchanges (Ehman, 2002; Curtis, 2002). Indeed, the widespread presence of ideal conditions for the applicability of the eddy covariance technique, as vast and homogeneous grass vegetation cover over flat terrains (Baldocchi, 2003), make steppes a suitable ground to ensure a constrain to flux estimates with independent methodological approaches. We report about the analysis of the carbon cycle of a true steppe ecosystem in southern Siberia during the growing season of 2004 in the framework of the TCOS-Siberia project activities performed by continuous monitoring of CO2 fluxes at ecosystem scale by the eddy covariance method, fortnightly samplings of phytomass, and ingrowth cores extractions for NPP assessment, and weekly measurements of heterotrophic component of soil CO2 effluxes obtained by an experiment of root exclusion. The carbon balance of the monitored natural steppe was, according to micrometeorological measurements, a sink of carbon of 151.7±30.1 gC m-2, cumulated during the growing season from May to September. This result was in agreement with the independent estimate through ecological inventory which yielded a sink of 150.1 gC m-2 although this method was characterized by a large uncertainty (±130%) considering the 95% confidence interval of the estimate. Uncertainties in belowground process estimates account for a large part of the error. Thus, in particular efforts to better quantify the dynamics of root biomass (growth and turnover) have to be undertaken in order to reduce the uncertainties in the assessment of NPP. This assessment should be preferably based on the application of multiple methods, each one characterized by its own merits and flaws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]