Drought alters the carbon footprint of trees in soils—tracking the spatio‐temporal fate of ¹³C‐labelled assimilates in the soil of an old‐growth pine forest

Above and belowground compartments in ecosystems are closely coupled on daily to annual timescales. In mature forests, this interlinkage and how it is impacted by drought is still poorly understood. Here, we pulse‐labelled 100‐year‐old trees with 13 CO 2 within a 15‐year‐long irrigation experiment in a naturally dry pine forest to quantify how drought regime affects the transfer and use of assimilates from trees to the rhizosphere and associated...