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Vegetation Functional Properties Determine Uncertainty of Simulated Ecosystem Productivity: A Traceability Analysis in the East Asian Monsoon Region

Journal Article · · Global Biogeochemical Cycles
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GB005909· OSTI ID:1542239
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  1. East China Normal Univ., Shanghai (China); Institute of Eco‐Chongming, Shanghai (China)
  2. McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON (Canada)
  3. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  4. Northern Arizona Univ. Flagstaff, AZ (United States)
  5. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba (Japan)
  6. Northern Arizona Univ., Flagstaff, AZ (United States)
  7. Univ. of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign, Urbana, IL (United States)
  8. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  9. Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA (United States)
  10. Univ. of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China); Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
  11. Univ. of Quebec at Montreal, QC (Canada); Northwest A&F Univ., Yangling (China)
  12. Peking Univ., Beijing (China)
  13. Montana State Univ. Bozeman, MT (United States)
  14. Univ. of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO (United States)
  15. Northern Arizona Univ., Flagstaff, AZ (United States); Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA (United States)
  16. Auburn Univ., Auburn, AL (United States)
  17. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Moffett Field, CA (United States)
  18. Univ. of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)
  19. East China Normal Univ., Shanghai (China)
  20. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  21. Northwest A&F Univ., Yangling (China)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Global and regional projections of climate change by Earth system models are limited by their uncertain estimates of terrestrial ecosystem productivity. At the middle to low latitudes, the East Asian monsoon region has higher productivity than forests in Europe–Africa and North America, but its estimate by current generation of terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) has seldom been systematically evaluated. Here, we developed a traceability framework to evaluate the simulated gross primary productivity (GPP) by 15 TBMs in the East Asian monsoon region. The framework links GPP to net primary productivity, biomass, leaf area and back to GPP via incorporating multiple vegetation functional properties of carbon–use efficiency (CUE), vegetation C turnover time (τveg), leaf C fraction (Fleaf), specific leaf area (SLA), and leaf area index (LAI)–level photosynthesis (PLAI), respectively. We then applied a relative importance algorithm to attribute intermodel variation at each node. The results showed that large intermodel variation in GPP over 1901–2010 were mainly propagated from their different representation of vegetation functional properties. For example, SLA explained 77% of the intermodel difference in leaf area, which contributed 90% to the simulated GPP differences. In addition, the models simulated higher CUE (18.1 ± 21.3%), τveg (18.2 ± 26.9%), and SLA (27.4±36.5%) than observations, leading to the overestimation of simulated GPP across the East Asian monsoon region. Furthermore, these results suggest the large uncertainty of current TBMs in simulating GPP is largely propagated from their poor representation of the vegetation functional properties and call for a better understanding of the covariations between plant functional properties in terrestrial ecosystems.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1542239
Journal Information:
Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Journal Name: Global Biogeochemical Cycles Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 33; ISSN 0886-6236
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (4)

Robust leaf trait relationships across species under global environmental changes journal June 2020
High ecosystem stability of evergreen broadleaf forests under severe droughts journal July 2019
Assessing the generality of global leaf trait relationships journal February 2005
Robust leaf trait relationships across species under global environmental changes text January 2020

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
58 GEOSCIENCES
MsTMIP
environmental drivers
initial conditions
model uncertainty
relative importance
vegetation functional property