| 1. |
- Fu, Zheng, et al.
(författare)
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Uncovering the critical soil moisture thresholds of plant water stress for European ecosystems
- 2022
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 28:6, s. 2111-2123
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding the critical soil moisture (SM) threshold (θcrit) of plant water stress and land surface energy partitioning is a basis to evaluate drought impacts and improve models for predicting future ecosystem condition and climate. Quantifying the θcrit across biomes and climates is challenging because observations of surface energy fluxes and SM remain sparse. Here, we used the latest database of eddy covariance measurements to estimate θcrit across Europe by evaluating evaporative fraction (EF)-SM relationships and investigating the covariance between vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and gross primary production (GPP) during SM dry-down periods. We found that the θcrit and soil matric potential threshold in Europe are 16.5% and −0.7 MPa, respectively. Surface energy partitioning characteristics varied among different vegetation types; EF in savannas had the highest sensitivities to SM in water-limited stage, and the lowest in forests. The sign of the covariance between daily VPD and GPP consistently changed from positive to negative during dry-down across all sites when EF shifted from relatively high to low values. This sign of the covariance changed after longer period of SM decline in forests than in grasslands and savannas. Estimated θcrit from the VPD–GPP covariance method match well with the EF–SM method, showing this covariance method can be used to detect the θcrit. We further found that soil texture dominates the spatial variability of θcrit while shortwave radiation and VPD are the major drivers in determining the spatial pattern of EF sensitivities. Our results highlight for the first time that the sign change of the covariance between daily VPD and GPP can be used as an indicator of how ecosystems transition from energy to SM limitation. We also characterized the corresponding θcrit and its drivers across diverse ecosystems in Europe, an essential variable to improve the representation of water stress in land surface models.
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| 2. |
- Graf, Alexander, et al.
(författare)
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Altered energy partitioning across terrestrial ecosystems in the European drought year 2018 : Energy partitioning in the drought 2018
- 2020
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Ingår i: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8436 .- 1471-2970. ; 375:1810
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Drought and heat events, such as the 2018 European drought, interact with the exchange of energy between the land surface and the atmosphere, potentially affecting albedo, sensible and latent heat fluxes, as well as CO 2 exchange. Each of these quantities may aggravate or mitigate the drought, heat, their side effects on productivity, water scarcity and global warming. We used measurements of 56 eddy covariance sites across Europe to examine the response of fluxes to extreme drought prevailing most of the year 2018 and how the response differed across various ecosystem types (forests, grasslands, croplands and peatlands). Each component of the surface radiation and energy balance observed in 2018 was compared to available data per site during a reference period 2004-2017. Based on anomalies in precipitation and reference evapotranspiration, we classified 46 sites as drought affected. These received on average 9% more solar radiation and released 32% more sensible heat to the atmosphere compared to the mean of the reference period. In general, drought decreased net CO 2 uptake by 17.8%, but did not significantly change net evapotranspiration. The response of these fluxes differed characteristically between ecosystems; in particular, the general increase in the evaporative index was strongest in peatlands and weakest in croplands. This article is part of the theme issue 'Impacts of the 2018 severe drought and heatwave in Europe: from site to continental scale'.
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| 3. |
- Tang, Angela Che Ing, et al.
(författare)
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Detection and attribution of an anomaly in terrestrial photosynthesis in Europe during the COVID-19 lockdown
- 2023
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 903
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Carbon dioxide (CO2) uptake by plant photosynthesis, referred to as gross primary production (GPP) at the ecosystem level, is sensitive to environmental factors, including pollutant exposure, pollutant uptake, and changes in the scattering of solar shortwave irradiance (SWin) − the energy source for photosynthesis. The 2020 spring lockdown due to COVID-19 resulted in improved air quality and atmospheric transparency, providing a unique opportunity to assess the impact of air pollutants on terrestrial ecosystem functioning. However, detecting these effects can be challenging as GPP is influenced by other meteorological drivers and management practices. Based on data collected from 44 European ecosystem-scale CO2 flux monitoring stations, we observed significant changes in spring GPP at 34 sites during 2020 compared to 2015–2019. Among these, 14 sites showed an increase in GPP associated with higher SWin, 10 sites had lower GPP linked to atmospheric and soil dryness, and seven sites were subjected to management practices. The remaining three sites exhibited varying dynamics, with one experiencing colder and rainier weather resulting in lower GPP, and two showing higher GPP associated with earlier spring melts. Analysis using the regional atmospheric chemical transport model (LOTOS-EUROS) indicated that the ozone (O3) concentration remained relatively unchanged at the research sites, making it unlikely that O3 exposure was the dominant factor driving the primary production anomaly. In contrast, SWin increased by 9.4 % at 36 sites, suggesting enhanced GPP possibly due to reduced aerosol optical depth and cloudiness. Our findings indicate that air pollution and cloudiness may weaken the terrestrial carbon sink by up to 16 %. Accurate and continuous ground-based observations are crucial for detecting and attributing subtle changes in terrestrial ecosystem functioning in response to environmental and anthropogenic drivers.
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| 4. |
- Zhang, Weijie, et al.
(författare)
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The effect of relative humidity on eddy covariance latent heat flux measurements and its implication for partitioning into transpiration and evaporation
- 2023
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Ingår i: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0168-1923. ; 330
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While the eddy covariance (EC) technique is a well-established method for measuring water fluxes (i.e., evaporation or 'evapotranspiration’, ET), the measurement is susceptible to many uncertainties. One such issue is the potential underestimation of ET when relative humidity (RH) is high (>70%), due to low-pass filtering with some EC systems. Yet, this underestimation for different types of EC systems (e.g. open-path or closed-path sensors) has not been characterized for synthesis datasets such as the widely used FLUXNET2015 dataset. Here, we assess the RH-associated underestimation of latent heat fluxes (LE, or ET) from different EC systems for 163 sites in the FLUXNET2015 dataset. We found that the LE underestimation is most apparent during hours when RH is higher than 70%, predominantly observed at sites using closed-path EC systems, but the extent of the LE underestimation is highly site-specific. We then propose a machine learning based method to correct for this underestimation, and compare it to two energy balance closure based LE correction approaches (Bowen ratio correction, BRC, and attributing all errors to LE). Our correction increases LE by 189% for closed-path sites at high RH (>90%), while BRC increases LE by around 30% for all RH conditions. Additionally, we assess the influence of these corrections on ET-based transpiration (T) estimates using two different ET partitioning methods. Results show opposite responses (increasing vs. slightly decreasing T-to-ET ratios, T/ET) between the two methods when comparing T based on corrected and uncorrected LE. Overall, our results demonstrate the existence of a high RH bias in water fluxes in the FLUXNET2015 dataset and suggest that this bias is a pronounced source of uncertainty in ET measurements to be considered when estimating ecosystem T/ET and WUE.
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