Plant nutrient acquisition under elevated CO₂ and implications for the land carbon sink

Terrestrial ecosystems currently sequester around one-third of the anthropogenic carbon emitted each year, slowing the pace of climate change. However, the future of this sink under rising atmospheric CO₂ concentrations remains uncertain, in part due to the impact that nutrient limitation may have on plant biomass. Here we review plant nutrient acquisition strategies and evidence of the enhanced utilization of these strategies under experimental and real-world elevated CO₂. Many of the strategies that are key to alleviating nutrient limitation under elevated CO₂ are not well represented in current Earth system models, and a simple data-driven analysis implies that models that do not account for nutrient acquisition strategies could underestimate the land sink.