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The sapwood area supporting a given leaf area (vH) reflects a coordinated coupling between carbon uptake, water transport and loss at a whole plant level. Worldwide variation in vH reflects diverse plants strategies adapt to prevailing environments, and impact the evolution of global carbon and water cycles. Why such a variation has not been convincingly explained yet, thus hinder its representation in Earth System Models. Here we hypothese that optimal vH tends to mediate between sapwood conductance and climates so that leaf water loss matches both sapwood hydraulics and leaf photosynthesis. By compiling and testing against two extensive datasets, we show that our hypothesis explains nearly 60% of vH variation responding to light, vapor pressure deficit, temperature, and sapwood conductance in a quantitively predictable manner. Sapwood conductance or warming-enhanced hydraulic efficiency reduces the demand on sapwood area for a given total leaf area and, whereas brightening and air dryness enhance photosynthetic capacities consequently increasing the demand. This knowledge can enrich Earth System Models where carbon allocation and water hydraulics play key roles in predicting future climate-carbon feedback.

Representations of interactions between the C and N cycles in terrestrial ecosystems are now implemented in a majority of state-of-the-art Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (C-N models). Standard models for simulating the response of individual processes to changes in N availability have not yet emerged and widely used models have not been tested against the full diversity of empirical data. Large remaining model structural uncertainty has important implications for projections and hindcasts of the land C uptake.Here, we summarise the current state of global land C balance simulations by comparing C-N models to C-only models; summarise data from field surveys and experiments to elucidate the role of soil N in controlling photosynthesis and its acclimation, stoichiometry, allocation, and growth; and demonstrate how optimality principles can guide the representation of acclimation and allocation for simulating ecosystem responses to experimental treatments of CO2 and soil N – consistent with observations. Promising model results are achieved by assuming that the atmospheric environment, including CO2, is the principal driver for photosynthetic capacities and leaf N following optimality theory of photosynthetic acclimation (Prentice et al., 2014). In turn, the functional balance hypothesis (Bloom et al., 1985) yields accurate predictions for how soil N availability and CO2 influence allocation and growth in different tissues.Our results show how confronting new theoretical approaches to simulating ecosystem C-N interactions against the collective constraints from diverse types of observations can guide model development and potentially reduce the large uncertainty in global carbon cycle projections.ReferencesBloom, Arnold J, F Stuart Chapin, and Harold A Mooney. “Resource Limitation in Plants--An Economic Analogy” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 16, no. 1 (1985): 363–92. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.es.16.110185.002051.Prentice, I. Colin, Ning Dong, Sean M. Gleason, Vincent Maire, and Ian J. Wright. “Balancing the Costs of Carbon Gain and Water Transport: Testing a New Theoretical Framework for Plant Functional Ecology.” Ecology Letters 17, 1 (2014): 82–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12211.

This research has been supported by the European Research Council (GC2.0 (grant no. 694481)), the European Research Council (REALM (grant no. 787203)), Imperial College through the Lee Family Scholarship, the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society (grant no. RC-2018-023), and the REDISCO (grant no. HAR2017-88035-P) project., Charcoal accumulated in lake, bog or other anoxic sediments through time has been used to document the geographical patterns in changes in fire regimes. Such reconstructions are useful to explore the impact of climate and vegetation changes on fire during periods when human influence was less prevalent than today. However, charcoal records only provide semi-quantitative estimates of change in biomass burning. Here we derive quantitative estimates of burnt area from vegetation data in two stages. First, we relate the modern charcoal abundance to burnt area using a conversion factor derived from a generalised linear model of burnt area probability based on eight environmental predictors. Then, we establish the relationship between fossil pollen assemblages and burnt area using tolerance-weighted weighted averaging partial least-squares regression with a sampling frequency correction (fxTWA-PLS). We test this approach using the Iberian Peninsula as a case study because it is a fire-prone region with abundant pollen and charcoal records covering the Holocene. We derive the vegetation-burnt area relationship using the 31 records that have both modern and fossil charcoal and pollen data and then reconstruct palaeoburnt area for the 113 records with Holocene pollen records. The pollen data predict charcoal-derived burnt area relatively well (R-2 = 0.44), and the changes in reconstructed burnt area are synchronous with known climate changes through the Holocene. This new method opens up the possibility of reconstructing changes in fire regimes quantitatively from pollen records, after regional calibration of the vegetation-burnt area relationship, in regions where pollen records are more abundant than charcoal records., European Research Council (ERC) European Commission 694481 787203, Imperial College through the Lee Family Scholarship, Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society RC-2018-023 REDISCO HAR2017-88035-P

(1) Land surface models require inputs of temperature and moisture variables to generate predictions of gross primary production (GPP). Differences between leaf and air temperature vary temporally and spatially and may be especially pronounced under conditions of low soil moisture availability. The Sentinel-3 satellite mission offers estimates of the land surface temperature (LST), which for vegetated pixels can be adopted as the canopy temperature. Could remotely sensed estimates of LST offer a parsimonious input to models by combining information on leaf temperature and hydration? (2) Using a light use efficiency model that requires only a handful of input variables, we generated GPP simulations for comparison with eddy-covariance inferred estimates available from flux sites within the Integrated Carbon Observation System. Remotely sensed LST and greenness data were input from Sentinel-3. Gridded air temperature data were obtained from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. We chose the years 2018–2019 to exploit the natural experiment of a pronounced European drought. (3) Simulated GPP showed good agreement with flux-derived estimates. During dry conditions, simulations forced with LST performed better than those with air temperature for shrubland, grassland and savanna sites. (4) This study advances the prospect for a global GPP monitoring system that will rely primarily on remotely sensed inputs.

[Abstract] Here we provide the ‘Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset’, containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits –plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dry mass, and diaspore (seed or spore) mass – define the primary axes of variation in plant form and function. The dataset is based on ca. 1 million trait records received via the TRY database (representing ca. 2,500 original publications) and additional unpublished data. It provides 92,159 species mean values for the six traits, covering 46,047 species. The data are complemented by higher-level taxonomic classification and six categorical traits (woodiness, growth form, succulence, adaptation to terrestrial or aquatic habitats, nutrition type and leaf type). Data quality management is based on a probabilistic approach combined with comprehensive validation against expert knowledge and external information. Intense data acquisition and thorough quality control produced the largest and, to our knowledge, most accurate compilation of empirically observed vascular plant species mean traits to date. The study has been supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits (https://www.try-db.org). TRY is an initiative of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, bioDISCOVERY/Future Earth (ICSU), the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig and Núcleo DiverSus (CONICET- Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina). The Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function study has been supported by the European BACI project (Towards a Biosphere Atmosphere change Index, EU grant ID 640176), and grants to SD by FONCyT, CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, and The Newton Fund (NERC UK – CONICET ARG). VO thanks RSF (#19-14-00038p). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL

The life span of leaves increases with their mass per unit area (LMA). It is unclear why. Here, we show that this empirical generalization (the foundation of the worldwide leaf economics spectrum) is a consequence of natural selection, maximizing average net carbon gain over the leaf life cycle. Analyzing two large leaf trait datasets, we show that evergreen and deciduous species with diverse construction costs (assumed proportional to LMA) are selected by light, temperature, and growing-season length in different, but predictable, ways. We quantitatively explain the observed divergent latitudinal trends in evergreen and deciduous LMA and show how local distributions of LMA arise by selection under different environmental conditions acting on the species pool. These results illustrate how optimality principles can underpin a new theory for plant geography and terrestrial carbon dynamics.

Plants in fire-prone ecosystems have evolved a variety of mechanisms to resist or adapt to fire. Post-fire resprouting is a key adaptation that promotes rapid ecosystem recovery and hence has a major impact on the terrestrial carbon cycle. However, our understanding of how the incidence of resprouting varies in different fire regimes is largely qualitative. The increasing availability of plant trait data and plot-based species cover data provides an opportunity to quantify the relationships between fire-related traits and fire properties. We investigated the quantitative relationship between fire frequency (expressed as the fire return time) and the proportion of resprouters in woody plants using plot data on species cover from Australia and Europe. We also examined the relationship between the proportion of resprouters and gross primary production (GPP) and grass cover, where GPP was assumed to reflect fuel loads and hence fire intensity, while grass cover was considered to be an indicator of the likelihood of ground fire and the speed of fire spread, using generalised linear modelling. The proportion of resprouting species decreased significantly as the fire return time increased. When the fire return time was considered along with other aspects of the fire regime, the proportion of resprouters had significant negative relationships with the fire return time and grass cover and a significant positive relationship with GPP. These findings demonstrate that plants with the ability to resprout occur more often where fire regimes are characterised by high-frequency and high-intensity crown fires. Establishing quantitative relationships between the incidence of resprouting and the fire return time and fire type provides a basis for modelling resprouting as a consequence of the characteristics of the fire regime, which in turn makes it possible to model the consequences of changing fire regimes on ecosystem properties.

There are three global 0.5 degree Vcmax datasets at growth temperature included: 1) Vcmax from GOME-2 SIF: GOME2_Vcmax_Tg_05deg.tif 2) Vcmax from TROPOMI SIF + LCC: TROPOMI_Vmax_Tg_mean.mat 3) Vcmax from global leaf chlorophyll content (LCC) map (Croft et al., 2020, RSE): LCC_Vcmax_Tg_mean.mat The geographic reference isthe same for all three datasets, conforming to that in the geotiff file. For any questions on the dataset, please contact: Dr. Jing M. Chen jing.chen@utoronto.ca

Wheat sowing dates are currently used as an input for crop models that simulated wheat production. However, the optimal time for planting wheat will be affected by climate changes and human adaptations to these changes. In this paper, we present an optimality-based modelling approach, with additional constraints from low temperature and precipitation intensity, to estimate wheat sowing dates globally. This approach assumes that wheat could be sown at any time when the climate conditions are suitable, but the optimal sowing date that would be adopted by farmers would be that which maximises overall grain yields. We therefore run the model starting on every possible sowing date as determined by the climate constraints and then select the date which gives the highest yield in each location. We compare the modelled optimal sowing dates with an updated version of observed sowing dates created by merging census-based datasets and local agronomic information. Cold season temperatures are the major determinant of sowing dates in the extra-tropics, whereas the seasonal cycle of monsoon rainfall plays an important role in determining sowing dates in the tropics. The model captures the timing of reported sowing dates, with difference between estimated and observed sowing dates of less than one month (< 30 days) over much of the world; maximum errors in tropical regions with large altitudinal gradients, such as Ethiopia, Bolivia and Peru, are up to two months. Discrepancies between the predictions and observations are larger in tropical regions than temperate and cold regions. Our approach for estimating optimal wheat sowing dates provides a way to examine human management decisions could mitigate the impacts of climate change on crop systems.

Leaf dark respiration (Rd) accounts for approximately 50% of plant respiration. The acclimation of plant respiration to temperature weakens the positive feedback to global warming. Most existing land surface models (LSMs) adopt an empirical leaf respiration scheme with a constant Rd25 (leaf dark respiration rate at 25°C) for each vegetation type, since there is no acceptable theory of Rd acclimation and how it varies temporally and spatially. Here we propose that Rd25 adjusts to prior nighttime temperature (Tnight) to maintain the ratio of Rd to photosynthesis capacity (Vcmax) approximately constant. To test this hypothesis and explore the time scale of acclimation, we predict Rd25 over different time windows and evaluate these predictions using data from 14 sites from two datasets (Boreal Forest Warming at an Ecotone in Danger (B4WarmED) experiment and Leaf Carbon Exchange dataset (LCE)), one of which provides measurements through time and the other across spatial gradients. Predictions that account for the combined effects of Vcmax and Tnight have better predictive power for all species (mean R2=0.4) than considering the effect of one factor alone. Predictions of acclimation on different timescales show that Vcmax and Tnight averaged over the past fortnight explain the most variation in observed Rd25. These results could provide an alternative solution to the leaf respiration schemes used in LSMs.

SignificanceThe magnitude of the CO

Both low soil water content (SWC) and high atmospheric dryness (vapor pressure deficit, VPD) can negatively affect terrestrial gross primary production (GPP). The sensitivity of GPP to soil versus atmospheric dryness is difficult to disentangle, however, because of their covariation. Using global eddy-covariance observations, here we show that a decrease in SWC is not universally associated with GPP reduction. GPP increases in response to decreasing SWC when SWC is high and decreases only when SWC is below a threshold. By contrast, the sensitivity of GPP to an increase of VPD is always negative across the full SWC range. We further find canopy conductance decreases with increasing VPD (irrespective of SWC), and with decreasing SWC on drier soils. Maximum photosynthetic assimilation rate has negative sensitivity to VPD, and a positive sensitivity to decreasing SWC when SWC is high. Earth System Models underestimate the negative effect of VPD and the positive effect of SWC on GPP such that they should underestimate the GPP reduction due to increasing VPD in future climates.

Vegetation regulates land‐atmosphere, water, and energy exchanges and is an essential component of land‐surface models (LSMs). However, LSMs have been handicapped by assumptions that equate acclimated photosynthetic responses to the environment with the fast responses observable in the laboratory. The effects of acclimation can be taken into account by including PFT‐specific values of photosynthetic parameters, but at the cost of increasing parameter requirements. Here, we develop an alternative approach for including acclimation in LSMs by adopting the P model, an existing light‐use efficiency model for gross primary production (GPP) that implicitly predicts the acclimation of photosynthetic parameters on a weekly to monthly timescale via optimality principles. We demonstrate that it is possible to explicitly separate the fast and slow photosynthetic responses to environmental conditions, allowing the simulation of GPP at the sub‐daily timesteps required for coupling in an LSM. The resulting model reproduces the diurnal cycles of GPP recorded by eddy‐covariance flux towers in a temperate grassland and boreal, temperate and tropical forests. The best performance is achieved when biochemical capacities are adjusted to match recent midday conditions. Comparison between this model and the operational LSM in the European Centre for Medium‐range Weather Forecasts climate model shows that the new model has better predictive power in most of the sites and years analyzed, particularly in summer and autumn. Our analyses suggest a simple and parameter‐sparse method to include both instantaneous and acclimated responses within an LSM framework, with potential applications in weather, climate, and carbon‐cycle modeling.

The maximum rate of Rubisco carboxylation (Vcmax) determines leaf photosynthetic capacity and is a key parameter for estimating the terrestrial carbon cycle, but its spatial information is lacking, hindering global ecological research. Here, we convert leaf chlorophyll content (LCC) retrieved from satellite data to Vcmax, based on plants' optimal distribution of nitrogen between light harvesting and carboxylation pathways. We also derive Vcmax from satellite (GOME-2) observations of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) as a proxy of leaf photosynthesis using a data assimilation technique. These two independent global Vcmax products agree well (r2=0.79,RMSE=15.46µmol m−2 s−1, P<0.001) and compare well with 3672 ground-based measurements (r2=0.69,RMSE=13.8µmol m−2 s−1 and P<0.001 for SIF; r2=0.55,RMSE=18.28µmol m−2 s−1 and P<0.001 for LCC). The LCC-derived Vcmax product is also used to constrain the retrieval of Vcmax from TROPical Ozone Mission (TROPOMI) SIF data to produce an optimized Vcmax product using both SIF and LCC information. The global distributions of these products are compatible with Vcmax computed from an ecological optimality theory using meteorological variables, but importantly reveal additional information on the influence of land cover, irrigation, soil pH, and leaf nitrogen on leaf photosynthetic capacity. These satellite-based approaches and spatial Vcmax products are primed to play a major role in global ecosystem research. The three remote sensing Vcmax products based on SIF, LCC, and SIF+LCC are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6466968 (Chen et al., 2022), and the code for implementing the ecological optimality theory is available at https://github.com/SmithEcophysLab/optimal_vcmax_R and https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5899564 (last access: 31 August 2022) (Smith et al., 2022).

Plants invest a considerable amount of leaf nitrogen in the photosynthetic enzyme ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase (RuBisCO), forming a strong coupling of nitrogen and photosynthetic capacity. Variability in the nitrogen-photosynthesis relationship indicates different nitrogen use strategies of plants (i.e., the fraction nitrogen allocated to RuBisCO; fLNR), however, the reason for this remains unclear as widely different nitrogen use strategies are adopted in photosynthesis models. Here, we use a comprehensive database of in situ observations, a remote sensing product of leaf chlorophyll and ancillary climate and soil data, to examine the global distribution in fLNR using a random forest model. We find global fLNR is 18.2 ± 6.2%, with its variation largely driven by negative dependence on leaf mass per area and positive dependence on leaf phosphorus. Some climate and soil factors (i.e., light, atmospheric dryness, soil pH, and sand) have considerable positive influences on fLNR regionally. This study provides insight into the nitrogen-photosynthesis relationship of plants globally and an improved understanding of the global distribution of photosynthetic potential., The fraction of leaf nitrogen allocated to RuBisCO indicates differing nitrogen use strategies of plants and varies considerably. Here the authors show that this variation is largely driven by leaf thickness and phosphorus content with light intensity, atmospheric dryness and soil pH also having considerable influence.

The large and catastrophic wildfires have been increasing across the globe in the recent decade, highlighting the importance of simulating and forecasting fire dynamics in near real-time. This is extremely challenging due to the complexities of physical models and geographical features. Running physics-based simulations for large wildfire events in near real-time are computationally expensive, if not infeasible. In this work, we develop and test a novel data-model integration scheme for fire progression forecasting, that combines Reduced-order modelling, recurrent neural networks (Long-Short-Term Memory), data assimilation, and error covariance tuning. The Reduced-order modelling and the machine learning surrogate model ensure the efficiency of the proposed approach while the data assimilation enables the system to adjust the simulation with observations. We applied this algorithm to simulate and forecast three recent large wildfire events in California from 2017 to 2020. The deep-learning-based surrogate model runs around 1000 times faster than the Cellular Automata simulation which is used to generate training data-sets. The daily fire perimeters derived from satellite observation are used as observation data in Latent Assimilation to adjust the fire forecasting in near real-time. An error covariance tuning algorithm is also performed in the reduced space to estimate prior simulation and observation errors. The evolution of the averaged relative root mean square error (R-RMSE) shows that data assimilation and covariance tuning reduce the RMSE by about 50% and considerably improves the forecasting accuracy. As a first attempt at a reduced order wildfire spread forecasting, our exploratory work showed the potential of data-driven machine learning models to speed up fire forecasting for various applications.

The seasonal and longer-term dynamics of fuel accumulation affect fire seasonality and the occurrence of extreme wildfires. Failure to account for their influence may help to explain why state-of-the-art fire models do not simulate the length and timing of the fire season or interannual variability in burnt area well. We investigated the impact of accounting for different timescales of fuel production and accumulation on burnt area using a suite of random forest regression models that included the immediate impact of climate, vegetation, and human influences in a given month and tested the impact of various combinations of antecedent conditions in four productivity-related vegetation indices and in antecedent moisture conditions. Analyses were conducted for the period from 2010 to 2015 inclusive. Inclusion of antecedent vegetation conditions representing fuel build-up led to an improvement of the global, climatological out-of-sample R 2 from 0.579 to 0.701, but the inclusion of antecedent vegetation conditions on timescales ≥ 1 year had no impact on simulated burnt area. Current moisture levels were the dominant influence on fuel drying. Additionally, antecedent moisture levels were important for fuel build-up. The models also enabled the visualisation of interactions between variables, such as the importance of antecedent productivity coupled with instantaneous drying. The length of the period which needs to be considered varies across biomes; fuel-limited regions are sensitive to antecedent conditions that determine fuel build-up over longer time periods (∼ 4 months), while moisture-limited regions are more sensitive to current conditions that regulate fuel drying.

Vegetation regulates land-atmosphere water and energy exchanges and is an essential component of land-surface models (LSMs). However, LSMs have been handicapped by assumptions that equate acclimated photosynthetic responses to environment with fast responses observable in the laboratory. These time scales can be distinguished by including specific representations of acclimation, but at the cost of further increasing parameter requirements. Here we develop an alternative approach based on optimality principles that predict the acclimation of carboxylation and electron-transport capacities, and a variable controlling the response of leaf-level carbon dioxide drawdown to vapour pressure deficit (VPD), to variations in growth conditions on a weekly to monthly time scale. In the “P model”, an optimality-based light-use efficiency model for gross primary production (GPP) on this time scale, these acclimated responses are implicit. Here they are made explicit, allowing fast and slow response time-scales to be separated and GPP to be simulated at sub-daily timesteps. The resulting model mimics diurnal cycles of GPP recorded by eddy-covariance flux towers in a temperate grassland and boreal, temperate and tropical forests, with no parameter changes between biomes. Best performance is achieved when biochemical capacities are adjusted to match recent midday conditions. This model suggests a simple and parameter-sparse method to include both instantaneous and acclimated responses within an LSM framework, with many potential applications in weather, climate and carbon - cycle modelling.Plain Language SummaryVegetation regulates the exchanges of energy, water and carbon dioxide between the land and the atmosphere. Numerical climate models represent these processes, focusing mainly on their rapid variations in response to changes in the environment (including temperature and light) on timescales of seconds to hours. However, plants also adjust their physiology to environmental changes over longer periods within the season. Here we have adapted a simple model that formulates plant behaviour in terms of optimal trade-offs between different processes, so it simulates processes on both time scales. This model correctly reproduces the daily cycle of carbon dioxide uptake by plants, as recorded in different kinds of vegetation. We show that plants optimize their behaviour for midday conditions, when the light is greatest, and adjust to longer-term environmental variations on a timescale of about a week to a month. The model conveniently avoids the need to give specific, fixed values to physiological variables (such as photosynthetic capacity) for different types of plants. The optimality assumptions mean that the model gives equally good results in tropical, temperate and boreal forests, and in grasslands, using the same equations, and a very small number of input variables that are constant across the world.Key PointsOptimality theory is used to develop a simple model incorporating fast and acclimated responses of photosynthesis and stomatal conductanceBiogeochemical photosynthetic capacities adjust to midday light conditionsThe new model simulates gross primary production on sub-daily timesteps across a range of different vegetation types and climate

Earth system models (ESMs) use photosynthetic capacity, indexed by the maximum Rubisco carboxylation rate (V cmax), to simulate carbon assimilation and typically rely on empirical estimates, including an assumed dependence on leaf nitrogen determined from soil fertility. In contrast, new theory, based on biochemical coordination and co‐optimization of carboxylation and water costs for photosynthesis, suggests that optimal V cmax can be predicted from climate alone, irrespective of soil fertility. Here, we develop this theory and find it captures 64% of observed variability in a global, field‐measured V cmax dataset for C3 plants. Soil fertility indices explained substantially less variation (32%). These results indicate that environmentally regulated biophysical constraints and light availability are the first‐order drivers of global photosynthetic capacity. Through acclimation and adaptation, plants efficiently utilize resources at the leaf level, thus maximizing potential resource use for growth and reproduction. Our theory offers a robust strategy for dynamically predicting photosynthetic capacity in ESMs.

© 2018 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2018 New Phytologist Trust The ratio of leaf intercellular to ambient CO 2 (χ) is modulated by stomatal conductance (g s ). These quantities link carbon (C) assimilation with transpiration, and along with photosynthetic capacities (V cmax and J max ) are required to model terrestrial C uptake. We use optimization criteria based on the growth environment to generate predicted values of photosynthetic and water-use efficiency traits and test these against a unique dataset. Leaf gas-exchange parameters and carbon isotope discrimination were analysed in relation to local climate across a continental network of study sites. Sun-exposed leaves of 50 species at seven sites were measured in contrasting seasons. Values of χ predicted from growth temperature and vapour pressure deficit were closely correlated to ratios derived from C isotope (δ 13 C) measurements. Correlations were stronger in the growing season. Predicted values of photosynthetic traits, including carboxylation capacity (V cmax ), derived from δ 13 C, growth temperature and solar radiation, showed meaningful agreement with inferred values derived from gas-exchange measurements. Between-site differences in water-use efficiency were, however, only weakly linked to the plant's growth environment and did not show seasonal variation. These results support the general hypothesis that many key parameters required by Earth system models are adaptive and predictable from plants’ growth environments.

The carbon sink potential of peatlands depends on the balance of carbon uptake by plants and microbial decomposition. The rates of both these processes will increase with warming but it remains unclear which will dominate the global peatland response. Here we examine the global relationship between peatland carbon accumulation rates during the last millennium and planetary-scale climate space. A positive relationship is found between carbon accumulation and cumulative photosynthetically active radiation during the growing season for mid- to high-latitude peatlands in both hemispheres. However, this relationship reverses at lower latitudes, suggesting that carbon accumulation is lower under the warmest climate regimes. Projections under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios indicate that the present-day global sink will increase slightly until around AD 2100 but decline thereafter. Peatlands will remain a carbon sink in the future, but their response to warming switches from a negative to a positive climate feedback (decreased carbon sink with warming) at the end of the twenty-first century.

The circum-Mediterranean region is characterized by high climatic diversity derived from its orographic heterogeneity and the influence of global marine and atmospheric circulation patterns. The region also has a long and dynamic history of human occupation dating back to ~ 8000 years BP. The complexity of this area is a challenge for reconstructing the dynamics of the vegetation through the Holocene. Rule-based approaches to reconstructing changing vegetation patterns through time are insufficient as they require the imposition of subjective boundaries between biomes and can be affected by known biases in pollen representation. We have developed and tested a new method that characterises biomes as a function of observed pollen assemblages based on a similarity index, conceptually related to the likelihood function, which takes account of within-biome variability in taxon abundances. We use 1181 modern pollen samples from the EMBSeCBIO database and assign these samples to biomes as represented in a map of potential natural vegetation that was developed using machine learning. The method was applied down-core to reconstruct past vegetation changes. Preliminary results show that this new methodology produces more accurate biome assignments under modern conditions (

There is huge uncertainty about how global exchanges of carbon between the atmosphere and land will respond to continuing environmental change. A better representation of photosynthetic capacity is required for Earth System models to simulate carbon assimilation reliably. Here we use a global leaf-trait dataset to test whether photosynthetic capacity is quantitatively predictable from climate, based on optimality principles; and to explore how this prediction is modified by soil properties, including indices of nitrogen and phosphorus availability, measured in situ. The maximum rate of carboxylation standardized to 25 °C (Vcmax25) was found to be proportional to growing-season irradiance, and to increase—as predicted—towards both colder and drier climates. Individual species’ departures from predicted Vcmax25 covaried with area-based leaf nitrogen (Narea) but community-mean Vcmax25 was unrelated to Narea, which in turn was unrelated to the soil C:N ratio. In contrast, leaves with low area-based phosphorus (Parea) had low Vcmax25 (both between and within communities), and Parea increased with total soil P. These findings do not support the assumption, adopted in some ecosystem and Earth System models, that leaf-level photosynthetic capacity depends on soil N supply. They do, however, support a previously-noted relationship between photosynthesis and soil P supply., Yunke Peng et al. use in-situ measurements and leaf trait data at 266 global sites for 1637 species and find that the maximum rate of carboxylation standardized to 25 °C is proportional to growing-season irradiance, and covaries with area-based leaf nitrogen and area-based phosphorus on the species level. These results challenge the assumption that leaf-level photosynthetic capacity depends on soil N supply yet supports the relationship between photosynthesis and soil P supply.

Fungi relieve nitrogen limitation Rising concentrations of atmospheric CO 2 stimulate plant growth; an effect that could reduce the pace of anthropogenic climate change. But plants also need nitrogen for growth. So far, experimental nitrogen addition has had equivocal effects on the magnitude of CO 2 fertilization. Terrer et al. explain that the impact of nitrogen on plant growth depends on the relationship between nitrogen availability and symbioses with mycorrhizal soil fungi. Only plants with ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with their roots can overcome nitrogen limitation. Science , this issue p. 72

Global fire-vegetation models are widely used to assess impacts of environmental change on fire regimes and the carbon cycle, and to infer relationships between climate, land use, and fire. However, differences in model structure and parameterizations, in both the vegetation and fire components of these models, could influence overall model performance, and to date there has been limited evaluation of how well different models represent various aspects of fire regimes. The Fire Model Intercomparison Project (FireMIP) is coordinating the evaluation of state-of-the-art global fire models, with the aim of improving projections of fire regime characteristic and fire impacts on ecosystems and human societies under the context of global environmental change. Here we perform a systematic evaluation of historical simulations made by nine FireMIP models in order to quantify their ability to reproduce a range of fire and vegetation benchmarks. The FireMIP models simulate a wide range in global annual total burnt area (39–536 Mha), and global annual fire carbon emission (0.91–4.75 Pg C a−1) for modern conditions (2002–2012), but most of the range in burnt area is within observational uncertainty (345–468 Mha). Benchmarking scores indicate that seven out of nine FireMIP models are able to represent the spatial pattern in burnt area. The models also reproduce the seasonality in burnt area reasonably well but struggle to simulate fire season length and are largely unable to represent inter-annual variations in burnt area. However, models that represent cropland fires see improved simulation of fire seasonality in the northern hemisphere. The three FireMIP models which explicitly simulate individual fires are able to reproduce the spatial pattern in number of fires, but fire sizes are too small in key regions and this results in an underestimation of burnt area. The correct representation of spatial and seasonal patterns in vegetation appears to correlate with a better representation of burnt area. While some FireMIP models are better at representing certain aspects of the fire regime, no model clearly outperforms all other models across the full range of variables assessed.

Plants and vegetation play a critical-but largely unpredictable-role in global environmental changes due to the multitude of contributing processes at widely different spatial and temporal scales. In this Perspective, we explore approaches to master this complexity and improve our ability to predict vegetation dynamics by explicitly taking account of principles that constrain plant and ecosystem behaviour: natural selection, self-organization and entropy maximization. These ideas are increasingly being used in vegetation models, but we argue that their full potential has yet to be realized. We demonstrate the power of natural selection-based optimality principles to predict photosynthetic and carbon allocation responses to multiple environmental drivers, as well as how individual plasticity leads to the predictable self-organization of forest canopies. We show how models of natural selection acting on a few key traits can generate realistic plant communities and how entropy maximization can identify the most probable outcomes of community dynamics in space- and time-varying environments. Finally, we present a roadmap indicating how these principles could be combined in a new generation of models with stronger theoretical foundations and an improved capacity to predict complex vegetation responses to environmental change.Integrating natural selection and other organizing principles into next-generation vegetation models could render them more theoretically sound and useful for earth system applications and modelling climate impacts.

Plant functional ecology requires the quantification of trait variation and its controls. Field measurements on 483 species at 48 sites across China were used to analyse variation in leaf traits, and assess their predictability. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to characterize trait variation, redundancy analysis (RDA) to reveal climate effects, and RDA with variance partitioning to estimate separate and overlapping effects of site, climate, life-form and family membership. Four orthogonal dimensions of total trait variation were identified: leaf area (LA), internal-to-ambient CO2 ratio (χ), leaf economics spectrum traits (specific leaf area (SLA) versus leaf dry matter content (LDMC) and nitrogen per area (Narea )), and photosynthetic capacities (Vcmax , Jmax at 25°C). LA and χ covaried with moisture index. Site, climate, life form and family together explained 70% of trait variance. Families accounted for 17%, and climate and families together 29%. LDMC and SLA showed the largest family effects. Independent life-form effects were small. Climate influences trait variation in part by selection for different life forms and families. Trait values derived from climate data via RDA showed substantial predictive power for trait values in the available global data sets. Systematic trait data collection across all climates and biomes is still necessary.

Photosynthetic 'least-cost' theory posits that the optimal trait combination for a given environment is that where the summed costs of photosynthetic water and nutrient acquisition/use are minimised. The effects of soil water and nutrient availability on photosynthesis should be stronger as climate-related costs for both resources increase. Two independent datasets of photosynthetic traits, Globamax (1509 species, 288 sites) and Glob13C (3645 species, 594 sites), were used to quantify biophysical and biochemical limitations of photosynthesis and the key variable Ci /Ca (CO2 drawdown during photosynthesis). Climate and soil variables were associated with both datasets. The biochemical photosynthetic capacity was higher on alkaline soils. This effect was strongest at more arid sites, where water unit-costs are presumably higher. Higher values of soil silt and depth increased Ci /Ca , likely by providing greater H2 O supply, alleviating biophysical photosynthetic limitation when soil water is scarce. Climate is important in controlling the optimal balance of H2 O and N costs for photosynthesis, but soil properties change these costs, both directly and indirectly. In total, soil properties modify the climate-demand driven predictions of Ci /Ca by up to 30% at a global scale.

We present a new global reconstruction of seasonal climates at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, 21 000 years BP) made using 3-D variational data assimilation with pollen-based site reconstructions of six climate variables and the ensemble average of the PMIP3—CMIP5 simulations as a prior (initial estimate of LGM climate). We assume that the correlation matrix of the uncertainties in the prior is both spatially and temporally Gaussian, in order to produce a climate reconstruction that is smoothed both from month to month and from grid cell to grid cell. The pollen-based reconstructions include mean annual temperature (MAT), mean temperature of the coldest month (MTCO), mean temperature of the warmest month (MTWA), growing season warmth as measured by growing degree days above a baseline of 5 ∘C (GDD5), mean annual precipitation (MAP), and a moisture index (MI), which is the ratio of MAP to mean annual potential evapotranspiration. Different variables are reconstructed at different sites, but our approach both preserves seasonal relationships and allows a more complete set of seasonal climate variables to be derived at each location. We further account for the ecophysiological effects of low atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration on vegetation in making reconstructions of MAP and MI. This adjustment results in the reconstruction of wetter climates than might otherwise be inferred from the vegetation composition. Finally, by comparing the uncertainty contribution to the final reconstruction, we provide confidence intervals on these reconstructions and delimit geographical regions for which the palaeodata provide no information to constrain the climate reconstructions. The new reconstructions will provide a benchmark created using clear and defined mathematical procedures that can be used for evaluation of the PMIP4–CMIP6 entry-card LGM simulations and are available at https://doi.org/10.17864/1947.244 (Cleator et al., 2020b).

Summary Terrestrial primary productivity and carbon cycle impacts of droughts are commonly quantified using vapour pressure deficit (VPD) data and remotely sensed greenness, without accounting for soil moisture. However, soil moisture limitation is known to strongly affect plant physiology.Here, we investigate light use efficiency, the ratio of gross primary productivity (GPP) to absorbed light. We derive its fractional reduction due to soil moisture (fLUE), separated from VPD and greenness changes, using artificial neural networks trained on eddy covariance data, multiple soil moisture datasets and remotely sensed greenness.This reveals substantial impacts of soil moisture alone that reduce GPP by up to 40% at sites located in sub‐humid, semi‐arid or arid regions. For sites in relatively moist climates, we find, paradoxically, a muted fLUE response to drying soil, but reduced fLUE under wet conditions. fLUE identifies substantial drought impacts that are not captured when relying solely on VPD and greenness changes and, when seasonally recurring, are missed by traditional, anomaly‐based drought indices. Counter to common assumptions, fLUE reductions are largest in drought‐deciduous vegetation, including grasslands. Our results highlight the necessity to account for soil moisture limitation in terrestrial primary productivity data products, especially for drought‐related assessments., See also the Commentary on this article by https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15176.

Contents Summary 507 I. Introduction 507 II. The return on investment approach 508 III. CO2 response spectrum 510 IV. Discussion 516 Acknowledgements 518 References 518 SUMMARY: Land ecosystems sequester on average about a quarter of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. It has been proposed that nitrogen (N) availability will exert an increasingly limiting effect on plants' ability to store additional carbon (C) under rising CO2 , but these mechanisms are not well understood. Here, we review findings from elevated CO2 experiments using a plant economics framework, highlighting how ecosystem responses to elevated CO2 may depend on the costs and benefits of plant interactions with mycorrhizal fungi and symbiotic N-fixing microbes. We found that N-acquisition efficiency is positively correlated with leaf-level photosynthetic capacity and plant growth, and negatively with soil C storage. Plants that associate with ectomycorrhizal fungi and N-fixers may acquire N at a lower cost than plants associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. However, the additional growth in ectomycorrhizal plants is partly offset by decreases in soil C pools via priming. Collectively, our results indicate that predictive models aimed at quantifying C cycle feedbacks to global change may be improved by treating N as a resource that can be acquired by plants in exchange for energy, with different costs depending on plant interactions with microbial symbionts.

Gross primary production (GPP)-the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by leaves, and its conversion to sugars by photosynthesis-is the basis for life on land. Earth System Models (ESMs) incorporating the interactions of land ecosystems and climate are used to predict the future of the terrestrial sink for anthropogenic CO21 . ESMs require accurate representation of GPP. However, current ESMs disagree on how GPP responds to environmental variations 1,2 , suggesting a need for a more robust theoretical framework for modelling 3,4 . Here, we focus on a key quantity for GPP, the ratio of leafinternal to external CO2 (χ). χ is tightly regulated and depends on environmental conditions, but is represented empirically and incompletely in today's models. We show that a simple evolutionary optimality hypothesis 5,6 predicts specific quantitative dependencies of χ on temperature, vapour pressure deficit and elevation; and that these same dependencies emerge from an independent analysis of empirical χ values, derived from a worldwide dataset of >3,500 leaf stable carbon isotope measurements. A single global equation embodying these relationships then unifies the empirical light-use efficiency model 7 with the standard model of C3 photosynthesis 8 , and successfully predicts GPP measured at eddy-covariance flux sites. This success is notable given the equation's simplicity and broad applicability across biomes and plant functional types. It provides a theoretical underpinning for the analysis of plant functional coordination across species and emergent properties of ecosystems, and a potential basis for the reformulation of the controls of GPP in next-generation ESMs.

Leaf size varies by over a 100,000-fold among species worldwide. Although 19th-century plant geographers noted that the wet tropics harbor plants with exceptionally large leaves,the latitudinal gradient of leaf size has not been well quantified nor the key climatic drivers convincingly identified. Here, we characterize worldwide patterns in leaf size. Large-leaved species predominate in wet, hot, sunny environments; small-leaved species typify hot,sunny environments only in arid conditions; small leaves are also found in high latitudes and elevations. By modeling the balance of leaf energy inputs and outputs, we show that daytime and nighttime leaf-to-air temperature differences are key to geographic gradients in leaf size. This knowledge can enrich ?next-generation? vegetation models in which leaf temperature and water use during photosynthesis play key roles. Fil: Wright, Ian J.. Macquarie University; Australia Fil: Dong, Ning. Macquarie University; Australia. University of Reading, Whiteknights; Reino Unido Fil: Maire, Vincent. Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières; Canadá. Macquarie University; Australia Fil: Prentice, I. Colin. Macquarie University; Australia. Imperial College London; Reino Unido Fil: Westoby, Mark. Macquarie University; Australia Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina Fil: Gallagher, Rachel V.. Macquarie University; Australia Fil: Jacobs, Bonnie F.. Southern Methodist University; Estados Unidos Fil: Kooyman, Robert. Macquarie University; Australia Fil: Law, Elizabeth A.. Macquarie University; Australia. The University Of Queensland; Australia Fil: Leishman, Michelle R.. Macquarie University; Australia Fil: Niinemets, Ülo. Estonian University of Life Sciences; Estonia Fil: Reich, Peter B.. University of Minnesota; Estados Unidos. Western Sydney University; Australia Fil: Sack, Lawren. University of California. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Estados Unidos Fil: Villar, Rafael. Universidad de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias. Área de Ecología; España Fil: Wang, Han. Northwest A & F University. College of Forestry; China Fil: Wilf, Peter. Pennsylvania State University. Department of Geosciences; Estados Unidos

We examine issues to consider when reframing conservation science and practice in the context of global change. New framings of the links between ecosystems and society are emerging that are changing peoples’ values and expectations of nature, resulting in plural perspectives on conservation. Reframing conservation for global change can thus be regarded as a stage in the evolving relationship between people and nature rather than some recent trend. New models of how conservation links with transformative adaptation include how decision contexts for conservation can be reframed and integrated with an adaptation pathways approach to create new options for global‐change‐ready conservation. New relationships for conservation science and governance include coproduction of knowledge that supports social learning. New processes for implementing adaptation for conservation outcomes include deliberate practices used to develop new strategies, shift world views, work with conflict, address power and intergenerational equity in decisions, and build consciousness and creativity that empower agents to act. We argue that reframing conservation for global change requires scientists and practitioners to implement approaches unconstrained by discipline and sectoral boundaries, geopolitical polarities, or technical problematization. We consider a stronger focus on inclusive creation of knowledge and the interaction of this knowledge with societal values and rules is likely to result in conservation science and practice that meets the challenges of a postnormal world.

Pollen data are widely used to reconstruct past climate changes, using relationships between modern pollen abundance in surface samples and climate at the surface-sample sites as a calibration. Visualization of modern pollen data in multidimensional climate space provides a way to establish that taxon abundances are well behaved before using them in climate reconstructions. Visualization is also helpful for ecological interpretation of variations in pollen abundance in space and time. Here, we present Generalized Additive Models for the distribution of 195 European pollen and pteridophyte spore taxa in a bioclimate space defined by seasonal temperatures (as mean temperature of the coldest month and annual growing degree days) and an annual moisture index. These models can be used to explore the realized climate niche of pollen taxa and to build statistical models for palaeoclimate reconstruction. The data set is released under a Creative Commons BY license. When using the data set, we kindly request that you cite this article.

Elevated CO2 (eCO(2)) experiments provide critical information to quantify the effects of rising CO2 on vegetation 1-6 . Many eCO(2) experiments suggest that nutrient limitations modulate the local magnitude of the eCO(2) effect on plant biomass(1,3,5), but the global extent of these limitations has not been empirically quantified, complicating projections of the capacity of plants to take up CO27,9. Here, we present a data-driven global quantification of the eCO(2) effect on biomass based on 138 eCO(2) experiments. The strength of CO2 fertilization is primarily driven by nitrogen (N) in similar to 65% of global vegetation and by phosphorus (P) in similar to 25% of global vegetation, with N- or P-limitation modulated by mycorrhizal association. Our approach suggests that CO2 levels expected by 2100 can potentially enhance plant biomass by 12 +/- 3% above current values, equivalent to 59 +/- 13 PgC. The globalscale response to eCO(2) we derive from experiments is similar to past changes in greenness(9) and bio-mass(10) with rising CO2, suggesting that CO2 will continue to stimulate plant biomass in the future despite the constraining effect of soil nutrients. Our research reconciles conflicting evidence on CO2 fertilization across scales and provides an empirical estimate of the biomass sensitivity to eCO(2) that may help to constrain climate projections.

Plant respiration is an important contributor to the proposed positive global carbon-cycle feedback to climate change. However, as a major component, leaf mitochondrial ('dark') respiration (Rd ) differs among species adapted to contrasting environments and is known to acclimate to sustained changes in temperature. No accepted theory explains these phenomena or predicts its magnitude. Here we propose that the acclimation of Rd follows an optimal behaviour related to the need to maintain long-term average photosynthetic capacity (Vcmax ) so that available environmental resources can be most efficiently used for photosynthesis. To test this hypothesis, we extend photosynthetic co-ordination theory to predict the acclimation of Rd to growth temperature via a link to Vcmax , and compare predictions to a global set of measurements from 112 sites spanning all terrestrial biomes. This extended co-ordination theory predicts that field-measured Rd and Vcmax accessed at growth temperature (Rd,tg and Vcmax,tg ) should increase by 3.7% and 5.5% per degree increase in growth temperature. These acclimated responses to growth temperature are less steep than the corresponding instantaneous responses, which increase 8.1% and 9.9% per degree of measurement temperature for Rd and Vcmax respectively. Data-fitted responses proof indistinguishable from the values predicted by our theory, and smaller than the instantaneous responses. Theory and data are also shown to agree that the basal rates of both Rd and Vcmax assessed at 25°C (Rd,25 and Vcmax,25 ) decline by ~4.4% per degree increase in growth temperature. These results provide a parsimonious general theory for Rd acclimation to temperature that is simpler-and potentially more reliable-than the plant functional type-based leaf respiration schemes currently employed in most ecosystem and land-surface models.

The ratio of leaf internal (ci ) to ambient (ca ) partial pressure of CO2 , defined here as χ, is an index of adjustments in both leaf stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate to environmental conditions. Measurements and proxies of this ratio can be used to constrain vegetation model uncertainties for predicting terrestrial carbon uptake and water use. We test a theory based on the least-cost optimality hypothesis for modelling historical changes in χ over the 1951-2014 period, across different tree species and environmental conditions, as reconstructed from stable carbon isotopic measurements across a global network of 103 absolutely dated tree-ring chronologies. The theory predicts optimal χ as a function of air temperature, vapour pressure deficit, ca and atmospheric pressure. The theoretical model predicts 39% of the variance in χ values across sites and years, but underestimates the intersite variability in the reconstructed χ trends, resulting in only 8% of the variance in χ trends across years explained by the model. Overall, our results support theoretical predictions that variations in χ are tightly regulated by the four environmental drivers. They also suggest that explicitly accounting for the effects of plant-available soil water and other site-specific characteristics might improve the predictions.

Land ecosystems currently take up a quarter of the human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. Future projections of this carbon sink are strikingly divergent, leading to major uncertainties in projected global warming. This situation partly reflects our insufficient understanding of carbon-nitrogen (C-N) interactions and particularly of the controls on biological N fixation (BNF). It is difficult to infer ecosystem responses for century time scales, relevant for global warming, from the comparatively short instrumental records and laboratory or field experiments. Here we analyse terrestrial emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) over the past 21,000 years as reconstructed from ice-core isotopic data and presented in part I of this study. Changing N2O emissions are interpreted to reflect changes in ecosystem N loss, plant available N, and BNF. The ice-core data reveal a 40 % increase in N2O emissions over the deglaciation, suggestive of a highly dynamic global N cycle whereby sources of plant-available N adjust to meet plant N demand and loss fluxes. Remarkably, the increase occurred in two steps, each realized within maximum two centuries, at the onsets of the northern hemisphere warming events around 14,600 and 11,700 years ago. We applied the LPX-Bern dynamic global vegetation model in deglacial simulations forced with Earth System Model climate data to investigate N2O emission patterns, mechanisms, and C-N coupling. The reconstructed increase in terrestrial emissions is broadly reproduced by the model, given the assumption that BNF positively responds to increasing N demand by plants. In contrast, assuming time- and demand-independent levels of BNF in the model to mimic progressive N limitation of plant growth results in N2O emissions that are incompatible with the reconstruction. Our results suggest the existence of (a) strong biological controls on ecosystem N acquisition, and (b) flexibility in the coupling of the C and N cycles during periods of rapid environmental change.

Before tree-ring series can be used to quantify climatic influences on growth, ontogenetic and microenvironmental effects must be removed. Existing statistical detrending methods struggle to eliminate bias, caused by the fact that older/larger trees are nearly always more abundantly sampled during the most recent decades – which happens also to have seen the strongest environmental changes. Here we develop a new approach to derive a productivity index (P*) from tree-ring series. The critical stem diameter, when an initial rapid increase in stem radial growth gives way to a gradual decrease, is estimated using a theoretical approximation; previous growth rings are removed from analysis. The subsequent dynamics of stem radial growth are assumed to be determined by: tree diameter and height; P* (gross primary production per unit leaf area, discounted by a "tax" due to the respiration and turnover of leaves and fine roots); and a quantity proportional to sapwood specific respiration (r1). The term r1 depends not only on the growth rate but also on tree height, because a given leaf area requires a greater volume of living sapwood to be maintained in taller trees. Height-diameter relationships were estimated from independent observations. P* values were then estimated from tree ring-width measurements on multiple trees, using a non-linear mixed-effects model in which the random effect of individual tree identity accounts for the impact of local environmental variability, due to soil or hydrological conditions, and canopy position (i.e. shading and competition). Year-by-year P* at a site should then represent the influence of year-by-year changes in environment, independently of the growth trend in individual trees. This approach was applied to tree-ring records from two genera (Picea and Pinus) at 492 sites across the Northern Hemisphere extratropics. Using a multiple linear mixed-effects regression with site as a random effect, it was found that estimated annual P* values for both genera show consistent, temporally stable positive responses of P* to total photosynthetically photon flux density during the growing season (PPFD5) and soil moisture availability (indexed by an estimate of the ratio of actual to potential evapotranspiration). The partial effect of mean temperature during the growing season (mGGD5) however was shown to follow a unimodal curve, being positive in climates with mGGD5

The El Cañizar de Villarquemado sequence provides a palaeoenvironmental record from the western Mediterranean Basin spanning the interval from the last part of MIS6 to the late Holocene. The pollen and sedimentological records provide qualitative information about changes in temperature seasonality and moisture conditions. We use Weighted Averaging Partial Least-Squares (WA-PLS) regression to derive quantitative reconstructions of winter and summer temperature regimes from the pollen data, expressed in terms of the mean temperature of the coldest month (MTCO) and growing degree days above a baseline of 0 °C (GDD0) respectively. We also reconstruct a moisture index (MI), the ratio of annual precipitation to annual potential evapotranspiration, taking account of the effect of low CO2 on water use efficiency. We find a rapid summer warming at the transition to MIS5. Summers were cold during MIS4 and MIS2, but some intervals in MIS3 were characterized by summers as warm as the warmest phases of MIS5 or the Holocene. However, MIS3 was not significantly warmer in winter than other intervals, and there was a gradual decline in winter temperature from MIS4 through MIS3 to MIS2. The pronounced changes in temperature seasonality during MIS5 and MIS1 are consistent with changes in summer insolation. The ecophysiological effects of changing CO2 concentration through the glacial cycle has a significant impact on reconstructed MI. Conditions became progressively more humid during MIS5 and MIS4 was also relatively humid, while MIS3 was more arid. High MI values are reconstructed during the deglaciation and there was a pronounced increase in aridity during the Holocene. Changes in MI are anti-correlated with changes in GDD0, with increased MI during intervals of summer warming indicating a strong influence of temperature on evapotranspiration. Although our main focus here is on longterm changes in climate, the Villarquemado record also shows millennial-scale changes corresponding to Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles.

Satellite retrievals of information about the Earth’s surface are widely used to monitor global terrestrial photosynthesis and primary production and to examine the ecological impacts of droughts. Methods for estimating photosynthesis from space commonly combine information on vegetation greenness, incoming radiation, temperature and atmospheric demand for water (vapour-pressure deficit), but do not account for the direct effects of low soil moisture. They instead rely on vapour-pressure deficit as a proxy for dryness, despite widespread evidence that soil moisture deficits have a direct impact on vegetation, independent of vapour-pressure deficit. Here, we use a globally distributed measurement network to assess the effect of soil moisture on photosynthesis, and identify a common bias in an ensemble of satellite-based estimates of photosynthesis that is governed by the magnitude of soil moisture effects on photosynthetic light-use efficiency. We develop methods to account for the influence of soil moisture and estimate that soil moisture effects reduce global annual photosynthesis by ~15%, increase interannual variability by more than 100% across 25% of the global vegetated land surface, and amplify the impacts of extreme events on primary production. These results demonstrate the importance of soil moisture effects for monitoring carbon-cycle variability and drought impacts on vegetation productivity from space. Soil moisture effects can substantially reduce photosynthesis and amplify the impacts of extreme events on primary production, potentially leading to biases in satellite-based estimates of photosynthesis, suggests an analysis of ground-based measurements.

Global climate change is expected to increase drought duration and intensity in certain regions while increasing rainfall in others. The quantitative consequences of increased drought for ecosystems are not easy to predict. Process-based models must be informed by experiments to determine the resilience of plants and ecosystems from different climates. Here, we demonstrate what and how experimentally derived quantitative information can improve the representation of stomatal and non-stomatal photosynthetic responses to drought in large-scale vegetation models. In particular, we review literature on the answers to four key questions: (1) Which photosynthetic processes are affected under short-term drought? (2) How do the stomatal and non-stomatal responses to short-term drought vary among species originating from different hydro-climates? (3) Do plants acclimate to prolonged water stress, and do mesic and xeric species differ in their degree of acclimation? (4) Does inclusion of experimentally based plant functional type specific stomatal and non-stomatal response functions to drought help Land Surface Models to reproduce key features of ecosystem responses to drought? We highlighted the need for evaluating model representations of the fundamental eco-physiological processes under drought. Taking differential drought sensitivity of different vegetation into account is necessary for Land Surface Models to accurately model drought responses, or the drought impacts on vegetation in drier environments may be over-estimated.