Matthew D. Petrie, John B. Bradford, Daniel R. Schlaepfer
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Forest and woodland decline is predicted to be increasingly influenced by meteorological variation and climate change in the future. By determining how meteorological variation leads to similar versus differing ecohydrological dynamics of forest and woodland ecosystems, we can gain insight on how future climate-driven declines may be realized. We characterized 23 mixed conifer forest (MC), ponderosa pine forest (PP) and piñon pine–juniper woodland (PJ) sites with different canopy covers in southern Nevada, USA. We compared meteorological variation between these sites and employed water balance modelling and information theory to estimate similarity in the density distributions of soil temperature (Ts), soil water potential (SWP) and transpiration partitioning into total evapotranspiration (T/ET) within and across ecosystems in wetter and drier seasons and in cooler and warmer decades. From 1941 to 2020, this location experienced declines in meteorological water deficit due to higher precipitation, although temperatures increased over more recent time periods (1981–2020). From 1981 to 2020, we generally found greater similarity in SWP and T/ET distributions within MC sites and PP sites in the cool season and in the warm season generally found greater similarity in Ts and T/ET distributions within and between PP and PJ sites (excepting T/ET between PJ sites and higher canopy cover PP sites). Recent warm decades promoted convergence in warm and cool season Ts dynamics, such that Ts dynamics generally became more similar between higher elevation MC sites and lower elevation PP–PJ sites. At the same time, warmer decades initiated divergence of SWP and T/ET dynamics within groups of MC–PP and PP–PJ sites that were formerly more similar to each other (excepting SWP in wet seasons). Although their dynamics will remain strongly coupled to precipitation, warming temperatures have the potential to promote divergence in the ecohydrological dynamics of ecosystems at lower and higher elevations in this sky island system and may also promote novel within-ecosystem divergence associated with variation in vegetation structural attributes.
期刊介绍:
Ecohydrology is an international journal publishing original scientific and review papers that aim to improve understanding of processes at the interface between ecology and hydrology and associated applications related to environmental management.
Ecohydrology seeks to increase interdisciplinary insights by placing particular emphasis on interactions and associated feedbacks in both space and time between ecological systems and the hydrological cycle. Research contributions are solicited from disciplines focusing on the physical, ecological, biological, biogeochemical, geomorphological, drainage basin, mathematical and methodological aspects of ecohydrology. Research in both terrestrial and aquatic systems is of interest provided it explicitly links ecological systems and the hydrologic cycle; research such as aquatic ecological, channel engineering, or ecological or hydrological modelling is less appropriate for the journal unless it specifically addresses the criteria above. Manuscripts describing individual case studies are of interest in cases where broader insights are discussed beyond site- and species-specific results.