The three major axes of terrestrial ecosystem function
Migliavacca, Mirco, Musavi, Talie, Mahecha, Miguel D., Nelson, Jacob A., Knauer, Jürgen, Baldocchi, Dennis D., Perez-Priego, Oscar, Christiansen, Rune, Peters, Jonas, Anderson, Karen, Bahn, Michael, Black, T. Andrew, Blanken, Peter D., Bonal, Damien, Buchmann, Nina, Caldararu, Silvia, Carrara, Arnaud, Carvalhais, Nuno, Cescatti, Alessandro, Chen, Jiquan, Cleverly, Jamie, Cremonese, Edoardo, Desai, Ankur R., El-Madany, Tarek S., Farella, Martha M., Fernández-Martínez, Marcos, Filippa, Gianluca, Forkel, Matthias, Galvagno, Marta, Gomarasca, Ulisse, Gough, Christopher M., Göckede, Mathias, Ibrom, Andreas, Ikawa, Hiroki, Janssens, Ivan A., Jung, Martin, Kattge, Jens, Keenan, Trevor F., Knohl, Alexander, Kobayashi, Hideki, Kraemer, Guido, Law, Beverly E., Liddell, Michael J., Ma, Xuanlong, Mammarella, Ivan, Martini, David, Macfarlane, Craig, Matteucci, Giorgio, Montagnani, Leonardo, Pabon-Moreno, Daniel E., Panigada, Cinzia, Papale, Dario, Pendall, Elise, Penuelas, Josep, Phillips, Richard P., Reich, Peter B., Rossini, Micol, Rotenberg, Eyal, Scott, Russell L., Stahl, Clement, Weber, Ulrich, Wohlfahrt, Georg, Wolf, Sebastian, Wright, Ian J., Yakir, Dan, Zaehle, Sönke, and Reichstein, Markus (2021) The three major axes of terrestrial ecosystem function. Nature, 598. pp. 468-472.
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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.
| Item ID: | 70036 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1476-4687 |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 10 May 2022 00:43 |
| FoR Codes: | 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4102 Ecological applications > 410203 Ecosystem function @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1806 Terrestrial systems and management > 180601 Assessment and management of terrestrial ecosystems @ 100% |
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