Modelling tropical forest responses to drought and El Nino with a stomatal optimization model based on xylem hydraulics.

ABSTRACT: The current generation of dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) lacks a mechanistic representation of vegetation responses to soil drought, impairing their ability to accurately predict Earth system responses to future climate scenarios and climatic anomalies, such as El Niño events. We propose a simple numerical approach to model plant responses to drought coupling stomatal optimality theory and plant hydraulics that can be used in dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). The model is validated against stand-scale forest transpiration (E) observations from a long-term soil drought experiment and used to predict the response of three Amazonian forest sites to climatic anomalies during the twentieth century. We show that our stomatal optimization model produces realistic stomatal respon

SUBMITTER: Eller CB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6178424 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature