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Trends and controls on water-use efficiency of an old-growth coniferous forest in the Pacific Northwest
Letter/Communication   Open access   Peer reviewed

Trends and controls on water-use efficiency of an old-growth coniferous forest in the Pacific Northwest

Yueyang Jiang, Christopher J. Still, Bharat Rastogi, Gerald Page, Sonia Wharton, Frederick C. Meinzer, Steven Voelker and John B Kim
Environmental Research Letters, Vol.14(7), pp.074029/1-074029/12
16/07/2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2612
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Trends and controls on water-use efficiency of an old-growth coniferous forest in the Pacific Northwest755.71 kBDownloadView
Published (Version of Record)CC BY V4.0,  Open Access
url
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2612View
Published (Version of Record)

Abstract

carbon and water fluxes climatic change drought old-growth coniferous forest water-use efficiency
At the ecosystem scale, water-use efficiency (WUE) is defined broadly as the ratio of carbon assimilated to water evaporated by an ecosystem. WUE is an important aspect of carbon and water cycling and has been used to assess forest ecosystem responses to climate change and rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This study investigates the influence of meteorological and radiation variables on forest WUE by analyzing an 18 year (1998-2015) half-hourly time series of carbon and water fluxes measured with the eddy covariance technique in an old-growth conifer forest in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Three different metrics of WUE exhibit an overall increase over the period 1998-2007 mainly due to an increase in gross primary productivity (GPP) and a decrease in evapotranspiration (ET). However, the WUE metrics did not exhibit an increase across the period from 2008 to 2015 due to a greater reduction in GPP relative to ET. The strength of associations among particular meteorological variables and WUE varied with the scale of temporal aggregation used. In general, vapor pressure deficit and air temperature appear to control WUE at half-hourly and daily time scales, whereas atmospheric CO2 concentration was identified as the most important factor controlling monthly WUE. Carbon and water fluxes and the consequent WUE showed a weak correlation to the Standard Precipitation Index, while carbon fluxes were strongly dependent on the combined effect of multiple climate factors. The inferred patterns and controls on forest WUE highlighted have implications for improved understanding and prediction of possible adaptive adjustments of forest physiology in response to climate change and rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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#13 Climate Action
#15 Life on Land

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Citation topics
3 Agriculture, Environment & Ecology
3.40 Forestry
3.40.55 Forest Dynamics
Web Of Science research areas
Environmental Sciences
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
ESI research areas
Environment/Ecology
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