South-East Australia has recently been subjected to two of the worst droughts in the historical record (Millennium Drought, 2000-2009 and Big Dry, 2017-2019). Unfortunately, a lack of forest monitoring has made it difficult to determine whether widespread tree mortality has resulted from these droughts. Anecdotal observations suggest the Big Dry may have led to more significant tree mortality than the Millennium drought. Critically, to be able to robustly project future expected climate change effects on Australian vegetation, we need to assess the vulnerability of Australian trees to drought. Here we implemented a model of plant hydraulics into the Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) land surface model. We parameterized the drought response behaviour of five broad vegetation types, based on a common garden dry-down experiment with species originating across a rainfall gradient (188-1,125 mm/year) across South-East Australia. The new hydraulics model significantly improved (~35%-45% reduction in root mean square error) CABLE's previous predictions of latent heat fluxes during periods of water stress at two eddy covariance sites in Australia. Landscape-scale predictions of the greatest percentage loss of hydraulic conductivity (PLC) of about 40%-60%, were broadly consistent with satellite estimates of regions of the greatest change in both droughts. In neither drought did CABLE predict that trees would have reached critical PLC in widespread areas (i.e. it projected a low mortality risk), although the model highlighted critical levels near the desert regions of South-East Australia where few trees live. Overall, our experimentally constrained model results imply significant resilience to drought conferred by hydraulic function, but also highlight critical data and scientific gaps. Our approach presents a promising avenue to integrate experimental data and make regional-scale predictions of potential drought-induced hydraulic failure.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15215 | DOI Listing |
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2025
Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717.
Climate-driven changes in high-elevation forest distribution and reductions in snow and ice cover have major implications for ecosystems and global water security. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem of the Rocky Mountains (United States), recent melting of a high-elevation (3,091 m asl) ice patch exposed a mature stand of whitebark pine () trees, located ~180 m in elevation above modern treeline, that date to the mid-Holocene (c. 5,950 to 5,440 cal y BP).
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Laboratory of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Basic Medical Science, Inner Mongolia Medical University, Hohhot, China.
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Department of Pediatric, West China Second University Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
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PLoS One
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Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
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