Gross primary production responses to warming,elevated CO2, and irrigation: quantifying the drivers of ecosystem physiology in a semiarid grassland |
| |
| Authors: | Edmund M. Ryan Kiona Ogle Drew Peltier Anthony P. Walker Martin G. De Kauwe Belinda E. Medlyn David G. Williams William Parton Shinichi Asao Bertrand Guenet Anna B. Harper Xingjie Lu Kristina A. Luus Sönke Zaehle Shijie Shu Christian Werner Jianyang Xia Elise Pendall |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster, UK;2. School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA;3. Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA;4. Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA;5. Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia;6. Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia;7. Department of Botany, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA;8. Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA;9. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA‐CNRS‐UVSQ, Université Paris‐Saclay, Gif‐sur‐Yvette, France;10. College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK;11. CSIRO Ocean and Atmosphere, Aspendale, Vic., Australia;12. Biogeochemical Integration Department, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany;13. Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA;14. Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK‐F), Frankfurt, Germany;15. Department of Microbiology & Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA;16. Research Center for Global Change and Ecological Forecasting, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China |
| |
| Abstract: | Determining whether the terrestrial biosphere will be a source or sink of carbon (C) under a future climate of elevated CO2 (eCO2) and warming requires accurate quantification of gross primary production (GPP), the largest flux of C in the global C cycle. We evaluated 6 years (2007–2012) of flux‐derived GPP data from the Prairie Heating and CO2 Enrichment (PHACE) experiment, situated in a grassland in Wyoming, USA. The GPP data were used to calibrate a light response model whose basic formulation has been successfully used in a variety of ecosystems. The model was extended by modeling maximum photosynthetic rate (Amax) and light‐use efficiency (Q) as functions of soil water, air temperature, vapor pressure deficit, vegetation greenness, and nitrogen at current and antecedent (past) timescales. The model fits the observed GPP well (R2 = 0.79), which was confirmed by other model performance checks that compared different variants of the model (e.g. with and without antecedent effects). Stimulation of cumulative 6‐year GPP by warming (29%, P = 0.02) and eCO2 (26%, P = 0.07) was primarily driven by enhanced C uptake during spring (129%, P = 0.001) and fall (124%, P = 0.001), respectively, which was consistent across years. Antecedent air temperature (Tairant) and vapor pressure deficit (VPDant) effects on Amax (over the past 3–4 days and 1–3 days, respectively) were the most significant predictors of temporal variability in GPP among most treatments. The importance of VPDant suggests that atmospheric drought is important for predicting GPP under current and future climate; we highlight the need for experimental studies to identify the mechanisms underlying such antecedent effects. Finally, posterior estimates of cumulative GPP under control and eCO2 treatments were tested as a benchmark against 12 terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs). The narrow uncertainties of these data‐driven GPP estimates suggest that they could be useful semi‐independent data streams for validating TBMs. |
| |
| Keywords: | Bayesian modeling carbon cycle elevated CO2 grasslands gross primary production multifactor global change experiment warming |
|
|
