Disturbances are important for renewal of North American forests. Here we summarize more than 180 site years of eddy covariance measurements of carbon dioxide flux made at forest chronosequences in North America. The disturbances included stand‐replacing fire (Alaska, Arizona, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan) and harvest (British Columbia, Florida, New Brunswick, Oregon, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Wisconsin) events, insect infestations (gypsy moth, forest tent caterpillar, and mountain pine beetle), Hurricane Wilma, and silvicultural thinning (Arizona, California, and New Brunswick). Net ecosystem production (NEP) showed a carbon loss from all ecosystems following a stand‐replacing disturbance, becoming a carbon sink by 20 years for all ecosystems and by 10 years for most. Maximum carbon losses following disturbance (g C m⁻²y⁻¹) ranged from 1270 in Florida to 200 in boreal ecosystems. Similarly, for forests less than 100 years old, maximum uptake (g C m⁻²y⁻¹) was 1180 in Florida mangroves and 210 in boreal ecosystems. More temperate forests had intermediate fluxes. Boreal ecosystems were relatively time invariant after 20 years, whereas western ecosystems tended to increase in carbon gain over time. This was driven mostly by gross photosynthetic production (GPP) because total ecosystem respiration (ER) and heterotrophic respiration were relatively invariant with age. GPP/ER was as low as 0.2 immediately following stand‐replacing disturbance reaching a constant value of 1.2 after 20 years. NEP following insect defoliations and silvicultural thinning showed lesser changes than stand‐replacing events, with decreases in the year of disturbance followed by rapid recovery. NEP decreased in a mangrove ecosystem following Hurricane Wilma because of a decrease in GPP and an increase in ER.

Climate warming is expected to differentially affect CO₂ exchange of the diverse ecosystems in the Arctic. Quantifying responses of CO₂ exchange to warming in these ecosystems will require coordinated experimentation using standard temperature manipulations and measurements. Here, we used the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX) standard warming treatment to determine CO₂ flux responses to growing‐season warming for ecosystems spanning natural temperature and moisture ranges across the Arctic biome. We used the four North American Arctic ITEX sites (Toolik Lake, Atqasuk, and Barrow [USA] and Alexandra Fiord [Canada]) that span 10° of latitude. At each site, we investigated the CO₂ responses to warming in both dry and wet or moist ecosystems. Net ecosystem CO₂ exchange (NEE), ecosystem respiration (ER), and gross ecosystem photosynthesis (GEP) were assessed using chamber techniques conducted over 24‐h periods sampled regularly throughout the summers of two years at all sites.At Toolik Lake, warming increased net CO₂ losses in both moist and dry ecosystems. In contrast, at Atqasuk and Barrow, warming increased net CO₂ uptake in wet ecosystems but increased losses from dry ecosystems. At Alexandra Fiord, warming improved net carbon uptake in the moist ecosystem in both years, but in the wet and dry ecosystems uptake increased in one year and decreased the other. Warming generally increased ER, with the largest increases in dry ecosystems. In wet ecosystems, high soil moisture limited increases in respiration relative to increases in photosynthesis. Warming generally increased GEP, with the notable exception of the Toolik Lake moist ecosystem, where warming unexpectedly decreased GEP >25%. Overall, the respiration response determined the effect of warming on ecosystem CO₂ balance. Our results provide the first multiple‐site comparison of arctic tundra CO₂ flux responses to standard warming treatments across a large climate gradient. These results indicate that (1) dry tundra may be initially the most responsive ecosystems to climate warming by virtue of strong increases in ER, (2) moist and wet tundra responses are dampened by higher water tables and soil water contents, and (3) both GEP and ER are responsive to climate warming, but the magnitudes and directions are ecosystem‐dependent.