Climate and plant trait strategies determine tree carbon allocation to leaves and mediate future forest productivity
[1];
[7]
- School of Biological Sciences University of Utah Salt Lake City Utah, Department of Geography University of California, Santa Santa Barbara California
- Department of Global Ecology Carnegie Institution for Science Stanford California, Department of Integrative Biology University of California, Berkeley Berkeley California
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Balboa Panama
- Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research – Atmospheric Environmental Research (IMK‐IFU) Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Garmisch‐Partenkirchen Germany
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Princeton University Princeton New Jersey
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Princeton University Princeton New Jersey, Department of Viticulture and Enology University of California Davis California
- School of Biological Sciences University of Utah Salt Lake City Utah
Abstract Forest leaf area has enormous leverage on the carbon cycle because it mediates both forest productivity and resilience to climate extremes. Despite widespread evidence that trees are capable of adjusting to changes in environment across both space and time through modifying carbon allocation to leaves, many vegetation models use fixed carbon allocation schemes independent of environment, which introduces large uncertainties into predictions of future forest responses to atmospheric CO 2 fertilization and anthropogenic climate change. Here, we develop an optimization‐based model, whereby tree carbon allocation to leaves is an emergent property of environment and plant hydraulic traits. Using a combination of meta‐analysis, observational datasets, and model predictions, we find strong evidence that optimal hydraulic–carbon coupling explains observed patterns in leaf allocation across large environmental and CO 2 concentration gradients. Furthermore, testing the sensitivity of leaf allocation strategy to a diversity in hydraulic and economic spectrum physiological traits, we show that plant hydraulic traits in particular have an enormous impact on the global change response of forest leaf area. Our results provide a rigorous theoretical underpinning for improving carbon cycle predictions through advancing model predictions of leaf area, and underscore that tree‐level carbon allocation to leaves should be derived from first principles using mechanistic plant hydraulic processes in the next generation of vegetation models.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 1525898
- Journal Information:
- Global Change Biology, Journal Name: Global Change Biology Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 25; ISSN 1354-1013
- Publisher:
- Wiley-BlackwellCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Language:
- English
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