Figure 1

Latitudinal distribution of mean annual precipitation [72], soil [78] and plant [84] carbon density, annual net primary production (NPP) per unit ground area from CASA [23, 26] and the Potsdam 17-model intercomparison [89], total soil and live carbon, total annual NPP, shown with the spatial distribution of land cover [106] (colors). Means and totals were calculated from published data using all terrestrial locations in 5° latitude zones.