EGU2020-12843, updated on 10 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12843
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The spectrum of ecosystem functional properties

Mirco Migliavacca1, Talie Musavi1, Miguel D. Mahecha1, Jacob A. Nelson1, Juergen Knauer2, Dennis D. Baldocchi3, Oscar Perez-Priego4, Markus Reichstein1, and the Ecosystem Functional Properties group*
Mirco Migliavacca et al.
  • 1Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany (mmiglia@bgc-jena.mpg.de)
  • 2CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Canberra, 2601, Australia
  • 3Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California
  • 4Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

Understanding the coordination of ecosystem functions across biomes and climate is still a major challenge that hampers our ability to properly predict biosphere response to climate change. Theories such as the leaf economics spectrum and the least cost investment strategy postulate that plants optimize the rate of investment in transpiration, photosynthetic capacity, and nitrogen (N) allocation dependent on the ratio of their costs to gain given their resources and environment.

In this contribution we test whether theories about functional traits coordination at leaf and organs level are emerging at ecosystem scale. We further investigate the existence of a global spectrum of ecosystem functional properties, and analyze how state of the art terrestrial biosphere models reproduce the spectrum.

To do so we used data of CO2, water and energy exchange for 164 sites (1237 site years) from the FLUXNET LaThuile and FLUXNET 2015 datasets with at least 3 years of data. For 61 sites, we were able to compile site information on canopy-scale measurements of foliar N concentration, maximum leaf area index , and stand age, from the literature.

We find evidence that a global spectrum of ecosystem functional properties exist, and that most of the variability (66.2%) is captured by three dimensions. The first dimension represents ecosystem productivity; the second the water availability gradient, and climate limitations to productivity; the third dimension reflects ecosystem respiration potential and carbon-use efficiency and is related to aridity and stand age and disturbance regimes. The first two dimensions of the spectrum are well captured by ecosystem models, while the third dimension is poorly reproduced. This might be related to the spin up of the models (steady-state condition) or to an incomplete representation of processes related to age that might limit the ability of models to accurately predict the dynamic carbon, water and nutrient cycling in ecosystems in disturbed areas.

Finally, we show across ecosystems globally that leaf level theories can be in some cases translated to the ecosystem scale. As a main example we found an inverse relationship between photosynthetic N and water use efficiency as postulated by the least cost investment theory across FLUXNET sites. However, this is possible only when the contribution of vegetation is properly accounted for, and evaporation from soil and wet surfaces is removed from the analysis. This highlights that emerging biological patterns at ecosystem scale might be masked by other factors related to physical rather than biological responses.

Ecosystem Functional Properties group:

Karen Anderson, Michael Bahn, Andrew T. Black, Peter D. Blanken, Damien Bonal, Nina Buchmann, Silvia Caldararu, Arnaud Carrara, Alessandro Cescatti, Jiquan Chen, James Cleverly, Edoardo Cremonese, Ankur R. Desai, Tarek S. El- Madany, Gianluca Filippa, Matthias Forkel, Marta Galvagno, Christopher M. Gough, Mathias Göckede, Andreas Ibrom, Hiroki Ikawa, Ivan Janssens, Martin Jung, Jens Kattge, Trevor F. Keenan, Alexander Knohl, Hideki Kobayashi, Guido Kraemer, Beverly E. Law, Michael J. Liddell, Xuanlong Ma, Ivan Mammarella, David Martini, Craig MacFarlaine, Giorgio Matteucci, Leonardo Montagnani, Daniel E. Pabon-Moreno, Cinzia Panigada, Dario Papale, Elise Pendall, Josep Penuelas, Richard P. Phillips, Peter B. Reich, Micol Rossini, Russell L. Scott, Martha M. Gebhardt, Clement Stahl, Georg Wohlfahrt, Sebastian Wolf, Ian J. Wright, Dan Yakir, Sönke Zaehle

How to cite: Migliavacca, M., Musavi, T., Mahecha, M. D., Nelson, J. A., Knauer, J., Baldocchi, D. D., Perez-Priego, O., and Reichstein, M. and the Ecosystem Functional Properties group: The spectrum of ecosystem functional properties, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-12843, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12843, 2020.

This abstract will not be presented.