Precipitation thresholds regulate net carbon exchange at the continental scale

Zhihua Liu (), Ashley P. Ballantyne, Benjamin Poulter, William R. L. Anderegg, Wei Li, Ana Bastos and Philippe Ciais
Additional contact information
Zhihua Liu: University of Montana
Ashley P. Ballantyne: University of Montana
Benjamin Poulter: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
William R. L. Anderegg: University of Utah
Wei Li: Université Paris-Saclay
Ana Bastos: Université Paris-Saclay
Philippe Ciais: Université Paris-Saclay

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Understanding the sensitivity of ecosystem production and respiration to climate change is critical for predicting terrestrial carbon dynamics. Here we show that the primary control on the inter-annual variability of net ecosystem carbon exchange switches from production to respiration at a precipitation threshold between 750 and 950 mm yr−1 in the contiguous United States. This precipitation threshold is evident across multiple datasets and scales of observation indicating that it is a robust result and provides a new scaling relationship between climate and carbon dynamics. However, this empirical precipitation threshold is not captured by dynamic global vegetation models, which tend to overestimate the sensitivity of production and underestimate the sensitivity of respiration to water availability in more mesic regions. Our results suggest that the short-term carbon balance of ecosystems may be more sensitive to respiration losses than previously thought and that model simulations may underestimate the positive carbon–climate feedbacks associated with respiration.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05948-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-05948-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05948-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().