Drylands cover 41% of the Earth’s land surface and are the largest source of interannual variability in the global carbon sink. While drylands are projected to experience an accelerated expansion over the next century, the implications of this expansion and degradation for variability in their gross primary production (GPP) remain elusive. Here we show that total dryland GPP by 2100 will increase by 12 ± 3% relative to the 2010–2014 baseline. Because drylands will largely expand into formerly more productive ecosystems, this increase in dryland GPP may not increase total global GPP. Further, GPP per unit dryland area will decrease as degradation of historical drylands outpaces the higher GPP of expanded drylands. Dryland expansion and climate-induced conversions among sub-humid, semi-arid, arid, and hyper-arid subtypes will lead to substantial changes in regional and subtype contributions to global dryland GPP variability. Our results highlight the vulnerability of dryland subtypes to more frequent and severe climate extremes and suggest that strong regional variations will require different mitigation strategies in different regions.
@article{osti_1615347,
author = {Yao, Jingyu and Liu, Heping and Huang, Jianping and Gao, Zhongming and Wang, Guoyin and Li, Dan and Yu, Haipeng and Chen, Xingyuan},
title = {Accelerated dryland expansion regulates future variability in dryland gross primary production},
annote = {Drylands cover 41% of the Earth’s land surface and are the largest source of interannual variability in the global carbon sink. While drylands are projected to experience an accelerated expansion over the next century, the implications of this expansion and degradation for variability in their gross primary production (GPP) remain elusive. Here we show that total dryland GPP by 2100 will increase by 12 ± 3% relative to the 2010–2014 baseline. Because drylands will largely expand into formerly more productive ecosystems, this increase in dryland GPP may not increase total global GPP. Further, GPP per unit dryland area will decrease as degradation of historical drylands outpaces the higher GPP of expanded drylands. Dryland expansion and climate-induced conversions among sub-humid, semi-arid, arid, and hyper-arid subtypes will lead to substantial changes in regional and subtype contributions to global dryland GPP variability. Our results highlight the vulnerability of dryland subtypes to more frequent and severe climate extremes and suggest that strong regional variations will require different mitigation strategies in different regions.},
doi = {10.1038/s41467-020-15515-2},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1615347},
journal = {Nature Communications},
issn = {ISSN 2041-1723},
number = {1},
volume = {11},
place = {United States},
publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},
year = {2020},
month = {04}}
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
China Scholarship Council (CSC); Foundation of Key Laboratory for Semi-Arid Climate Change; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP); USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
