Accounting for foliar gradients in Vc(max) and J(max) improves estimates of net CO2 exchange of forests

Vertical gradients in the canopy represent a major challenge for scaling from foliar photosynthesis to ecosystem-level CO2 fluxes. We tested whether accounting for independent gradients of carboxylation capacity (Vc(max)) and photosynthetic electron transport (J(max)) improves estimates of forest net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE).