 The three major axes of terrestrial ecosystem functionMirco Migliavacca (),
Talie Musavi,
Miguel D. Mahecha,
Jacob A. Nelson,
Jürgen Knauer,
Dennis D. Baldocchi,
Oscar Perez-Priego,
Rune Christiansen,
Jonas Peters,
Karen Anderson,
Michael Bahn,
T. Andrew Black,
Peter D. Blanken,
Damien Bonal,
Nina Buchmann,
Silvia Caldararu,
Arnaud Carrara,
Nuno Carvalhais,
Alessandro Cescatti,
Jiquan Chen,
Jamie Cleverly,
Edoardo Cremonese,
Ankur R. Desai,
Tarek S. El-Madany,
Martha M. Farella,
Marcos Fernández-Martínez,
Gianluca Filippa,
Matthias Forkel,
Marta Galvagno,
Ulisse Gomarasca,
Christopher M. Gough,
Mathias Göckede,
Andreas Ibrom,
Hiroki Ikawa,
Ivan A. Janssens,
Martin Jung,
Jens Kattge,
Trevor F. Keenan,
Alexander Knohl,
Hideki Kobayashi,
Guido Kraemer,
Beverly E. Law,
Michael J. Liddell,
Xuanlong Ma,
Ivan Mammarella,
David Martini,
Craig Macfarlane,
Giorgio Matteucci,
Leonardo Montagnani,
Daniel E. Pabon-Moreno,
Cinzia Panigada,
Dario Papale,
Elise Pendall,
Josep Penuelas,
Richard P. Phillips,
Peter B. Reich,
Micol Rossini,
Eyal Rotenberg,
Russell L. Scott,
Clement Stahl,
Ulrich Weber,
Georg Wohlfahrt,
Sebastian Wolf,
Ian J. Wright,
Dan Yakir,
Sönke Zaehle and
Markus Reichstein ()
Nature, 2021, vol. 598, issue 7881, 468-472 Abstract: Abstract The leaf economics spectrum1,2 and the global spectrum of plant forms and functions3 revealed fundamental axes of variation in plant traits, which represent different ecological strategies that are shaped by the evolutionary development of plant species2. Ecosystem functions depend on environmental conditions and the traits of species that comprise the ecological communities4. However, the axes of variation of ecosystem functions are largely unknown, which limits our understanding of how ecosystems respond as a whole to anthropogenic drivers, climate and environmental variability4,5. Here we derive a set of ecosystem functions6 from a dataset of surface gas exchange measurements across major terrestrial biomes. We find that most of the variability within ecosystem functions (71.8%) is captured by three key axes. The first axis reflects maximum ecosystem productivity and is mostly explained by vegetation structure. The second axis reflects ecosystem water-use strategies and is jointly explained by variation in vegetation height and climate. The third axis, which represents ecosystem carbon-use efficiency, features a gradient related to aridity, and is explained primarily by variation in vegetation structure. We show that two state-of-the-art land surface models reproduce the first and most important axis of ecosystem functions. However, the models tend to simulate more strongly correlated functions than those observed, which limits their ability to accurately predict the full range of responses to environmental changes in carbon, water and energy cycling in terrestrial ecosystems7,8. Date: 2021 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:598:y:2021:i:7881:d:10.1038_s41586-021-03939-9 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03939-9 Access Statistics for this article Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper More articles in Nature from Nature |
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