| 1. |
- Holm, Jennifer A., et al.
(författare)
-
Exploring the impacts of unprecedented climate extremes on forest ecosystems : Hypotheses to guide modeling and experimental studies
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Biogeosciences. - 1726-4170. ; 20:11, s. 2117-2142
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climatic extreme events are expected to occur more frequently in the future, increasing the likelihood of unprecedented climate extremes (UCEs) or record-breaking events. UCEs, such as extreme heatwaves and droughts, substantially affect ecosystem stability and carbon cycling by increasing plant mortality and delaying ecosystem recovery. Quantitative knowledge of such effects is limited due to the paucity of experiments focusing on extreme climatic events beyond the range of historical experience. Here, we present a road map of how dynamic vegetation demographic models (VDMs) can be used to investigate hypotheses surrounding ecosystem responses to one type of UCE: unprecedented droughts. As a result of nonlinear ecosystem responses to UCEs that are qualitatively different from responses to milder extremes, we consider both biomass loss and recovery rates over time by reporting a time-integrated carbon loss as a result of UCE, relative to the absence of drought. Additionally, we explore how unprecedented droughts in combination with increasing atmospheric CO2 and/or temperature may affect ecosystem stability and carbon cycling. We explored these questions using simulations of pre-drought and post-drought conditions at well-studied forest sites using well-tested models (ED2 and LPJ-GUESS). The severity and patterns of biomass losses differed substantially between models. For example, biomass loss could be sensitive to either drought duration or drought intensity depending on the model approach. This is due to the models having different, but also plausible, representations of processes and interactions, highlighting the complicated variability of UCE impacts that still need to be narrowed down in models. Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations (eCO2) alone did not completely buffer the ecosystems from carbon losses during UCEs in the majority of our simulations. Our findings highlight the consequences of differences in process formulations and uncertainties in models, most notably related to availability in plant carbohydrate storage and the diversity of plant hydraulic schemes, in projecting potential ecosystem responses to UCEs. We provide a summary of the current state and role of many model processes that give way to different underlying hypotheses of plant responses to UCEs, reflecting knowledge gaps which in future studies could be tested with targeted field experiments and an iterative modeling-experimental conceptual framework.
|
|
| 2. |
- Andresen, Louise C., 1974, et al.
(författare)
-
Shifting Impacts of Climate Change: Long-Term Patterns of Plant Response to Elevated CO2, Drought, and Warming Across Ecosystems
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Large-Scale Ecology: Model Systems to Global Perspectives. - : Elsevier. - 9780081009352
-
Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Field experiments that expose terrestrial ecosystems to climate change factors by manipulations are expensive to maintain, and typically only last a few years. Plant biomass is commonly used to assess responses to climate treatments and to predict climate change impacts. However, response to the treatments might be considerably different between the early years and a decade later. The aim of this data analysis was to develop and apply a method for evaluating changes in plant biomass responses through time, in order to provide a firm basis for discussing how the ‘short-term’ response might differ from the ‘long-term’ response. Across 22 sites situated in the northern hemisphere, which covered three continents, and multiple ecosystems (grasslands, shrublands, moorlands, forests, and deserts), we evaluated biomass datasets from long-term experiments with exposure to elevated CO2 (eCO2), warming, or drought. We developed methods for assessing biomass response patterns to the manipulations using polynomial and linear (piecewise) model analysis and linked the responses to sitespecific variables such as temperature and rainfall. Polynomial patterns across sites indicated changes in response direction over time under eCO2, warming, and drought. In addition, five distinct pattern types were confirmed within sites: ‘no response’, ‘delayed response’, ‘directional response’, ‘dampening response’, and ‘altered response’ patterns. We found that biomass response direction was as likely to change over time as it was to be consistent, and therefore suggest that climate manipulation experiments should be carried out over timescales covering both short- and long-term responses, in order to realistically assess future impacts of climate change.
|
|
| 3. |
- Hovenden, Mark J., et al.
(författare)
-
Globally consistent influences of seasonal precipitation limit grassland biomass response to elevated CO2
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Nature Plants. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2055-0278. ; 5, s. 167-173
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration should stimulate biomass production directly via biochemical stimulation of carbon assimilation, and indirectly via water savings caused by increased plant water-use efficiency. Because of these water savings, the CO 2 fertilization effect (CFE) should be stronger at drier sites, yet large differences among experiments in grassland biomass response to elevated CO 2 appear to be unrelated to annual precipitation, preventing useful generalizations. Here, we show that, as predicted, the impact of elevated CO 2 on biomass production in 19 globally distributed temperate grassland experiments reduces as mean precipitation in seasons other than spring increases, but that it rises unexpectedly as mean spring precipitation increases. Moreover, because sites with high spring precipitation also tend to have high precipitation at other times, these effects of spring and non-spring precipitation on the CO 2 response offset each other, constraining the response of ecosystem productivity to rising CO 2 . This explains why previous analyses were unable to discern a reliable trend between site dryness and the CFE. Thus, the CFE in temperate grasslands worldwide will be constrained by their natural rainfall seasonality such that the stimulation of biomass by rising CO 2 could be substantially less than anticipated.
|
|
| 4. |
- Maschler, Julia, et al.
(författare)
-
Links across ecological scales: Plant biomass responses to elevated CO2
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 28:21, s. 6115-6134
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The degree to which elevated CO2 concentrations (e[CO2]) increase the amount of carbon (C) assimilated by vegetation plays a key role in climate change. However, due to the short-term nature of CO2 enrichment experiments and the lack of reconciliation between different ecological scales, the effect of e[CO2] on plant biomass stocks remains a major uncertainty in future climate projections. Here, we review the effect of e[CO2] on plant biomass across multiple levels of ecological organization, scaling from physiological responses to changes in population-, community-, ecosystem-, and global-scale dynamics. We find that evidence for a sustained biomass response to e[CO2] varies across ecological scales, leading to diverging conclusions about the responses of individuals, populations, communities, and ecosystems. While the distinct focus of every scale reveals new mechanisms driving biomass accumulation under e[CO2], none of them provides a full picture of all relevant processes. For example, while physiological evidence suggests a possible long-term basis for increased biomass accumulation under e[CO2] through sustained photosynthetic stimulation, population-scale evidence indicates that a possible e[CO2]-induced increase n mortality rates might potentially outweigh the effect of increases in plant growth rates on biomass levels. Evidence at the global scale may indicate that e[CO2] has contributed to increased biomass cover over recent decades, but due to the difficulty to disentangle the effect of e[CO2] from a variety of climatic and land-use-related drivers of plant biomass stocks, it remains unclear whether nutrient limitations or other ecological mechanisms operating at finer scales will dampen the e[CO2] effect over time. By exploring these discrepancies, we identify key research gaps in our understanding of the effect of e[CO2] on plant biomass and highlight the need to integrate knowledge across scales of ecological organization so that large-scale modeling can represent the finer-scale mechanisms needed to constrain our understanding of future terrestrial C storage.
|
|
| 5. |
- van Gestel, Natasja, et al.
(författare)
-
Predicting soil carbon loss with warming
- 2018
-
Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 554:E4-5
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
|
|
| 6. |
- Van Sundert, Kevin, et al.
(författare)
-
When things get MESI : The Manipulation Experiments Synthesis Initiative—A coordinated effort to synthesize terrestrial global change experiments
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 29:7, s. 1922-1938
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Responses of the terrestrial biosphere to rapidly changing environmental conditions are a major source of uncertainty in climate projections. In an effort to reduce this uncertainty, a wide range of global change experiments have been conducted that mimic future conditions in terrestrial ecosystems, manipulating CO2, temperature, and nutrient and water availability. Syntheses of results across experiments provide a more general sense of ecosystem responses to global change, and help to discern the influence of background conditions such as climate and vegetation type in determining global change responses. Several independent syntheses of published data have yielded distinct databases for specific objectives. Such parallel, uncoordinated initiatives carry the risk of producing redundant data collection efforts and have led to contrasting outcomes without clarifying the underlying reason for divergence. These problems could be avoided by creating a publicly available, updatable, curated database. Here, we report on a global effort to collect and curate 57,089 treatment responses across 3644 manipulation experiments at 1145 sites, simulating elevated CO2, warming, nutrient addition, and precipitation changes. In the resulting Manipulation Experiments Synthesis Initiative (MESI) database, effects of experimental global change drivers on carbon and nutrient cycles are included, as well as ancillary data such as background climate, vegetation type, treatment magnitude, duration, and, unique to our database, measured soil properties. Our analysis of the database indicates that most experiments are short term (one or few growing seasons), conducted in the USA, Europe, or China, and that the most abundantly reported variable is aboveground biomass. We provide the most comprehensive multifactor global change database to date, enabling the research community to tackle open research questions, vital to global policymaking. The MESI database, freely accessible at doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7153253, opens new avenues for model evaluation and synthesis-based understanding of how global change affects terrestrial biomes. We welcome contributions to the database on GitHub.
|
|
