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Observed and modelled historical trends in the water use efficiency of plants and ecosystems

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Title: Observed and modelled historical trends in the water use efficiency of plants and ecosystems
Authors: Lavergne, A
Graven, H
De Kauwe, MG
Keenan, FT
Medlyn, BE
Prentice, I
Item Type: Journal Article
Abstract: Plant water‐use efficiency (WUE, the carbon gained through photosynthesis per unit of water lost through transpiration) is a tracer of the plant physiological controls on the exchange of water and carbon dioxide between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. At the leaf level, rising CO2 concentrations tend to increase carbon uptake (in the absence of other limitations) and to reduce stomatal conductance, both effects leading to an increase in leaf WUE. At the ecosystem level, indirect effects (e.g. increased leaf area index, soil water savings) may amplify or dampen the direct effect of CO2. Thus, the extent to which changes in leaf WUE translate to changes at the ecosystem scale remains unclear. The differences in the magnitude of increase in leaf versus ecosystem WUE as reported by several studies are much larger than would be expected with current understanding of tree physiology and scaling, indicating unresolved issues. Moreover, current vegetation models produce inconsistent and often unrealistic magnitudes and patterns of variability in leaf and ecosystem WUE, calling for a better assessment of the underlying approaches. Here, we review the causes of variations in observed and modelled historical trends in WUE over the continuum of scales from leaf to ecosystem, including methodological issues, with the aim of elucidating the reasons for discrepancies observed within and across spatial scales. We emphasize that even though physiological responses to changing environmental drivers should be interpreted differently depending on the observational scale, there are large uncertainties in each data set which are often underestimated. Assumptions made by the vegetation models about the main processes influencing WUE strongly impact the modelled historical trends. We provide recommendations for improving long‐term observation‐based estimates of WUE that will better inform the representation of WUE in vegetation models.
Issue Date: 1-Jul-2019
Date of Acceptance: 22-Mar-2019
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/69695
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.14634
ISSN: 1354-1013
Publisher: Wiley
Start Page: 2242
End Page: 2257
Journal / Book Title: Global Change Biology
Volume: 25
Issue: 7
Copyright Statement: © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is the accepted version of the following article, which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.14634
Sponsor/Funder: AXA Research Fund
Funder's Grant Number: AXA Chair Programme in Biosphere and Climate Impacts
Keywords: Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Biodiversity Conservation
Ecology
Environmental Sciences
Biodiversity & Conservation
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
carbon isotopic discrimination
eddy-covariance flux
spatial scales
stomatal conductance
trends in water-use efficiency
vegetation modelling
CARBON-ISOTOPE DISCRIMINATION
ATMOSPHERIC CO2 CONCENTRATIONS
GAS-EXCHANGE MEASUREMENTS
TREE-RING
RISING CO2
STOMATAL CONDUCTANCE
EDDY COVARIANCE
ELEVATED CO2
MESOPHYLL CONDUCTANCE
FIELD EXPERIMENTS
carbon isotopic discrimination
eddy-covariance flux
spatial scales
stomatal conductance
trends in water-use efficiency
vegetation modelling
Carbon Dioxide
Ecosystem
Photosynthesis
Plant Leaves
Plants
Water
Plants
Plant Leaves
Carbon Dioxide
Water
Ecosystem
Photosynthesis
Ecology
06 Biological Sciences
05 Environmental Sciences
Publication Status: Published
Online Publication Date: 2019-04-01
Appears in Collections:Space and Atmospheric Physics
Physics
Department of Life Sciences
Faculty of Natural Sciences