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Monitoring Changes in Water Use Efficiency to Understand Drought Induced Tree Mortality
Monitoring Changes in Water Use Efficiency to Understand Drought Induced Tree Mortality
- Source :
- Forests; Volume 8; Issue 10; Pages: 365, Forests, Vol 8, Iss 10, p 365 (2017)
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2017.
-
Abstract
- Forests are becoming increasingly vulnerable to rising tree mortality rates in response to warming and drought. In California, the most severe drought on record occurred from 2012–2016 and high tree mortality rates were observed in response to this prolonged drought. Differences in satellite-derived estimates of water-use efficiency (WUE) under normal (i.e., WUEBASELINE) and drought conditions (ΔWUE = WUE2014 − WUEBASELINE) captured variation in drought resilience, and is used here to understand patterns in tree mortality. Across California forests, a low WUEBASELINE under normal conditions was indicative of a low drought resilience and was associated with increasing tree mortality rates. Forested areas with high drought frequency in recent years (2002–2015) and lower WUEBASELINE were the most vulnerable to high post-drought tree mortality. Post drought tree mortality peaked in 2015 and tree mortality was detected in areas where bark beetles were active. Our results show that spatial and temporal changes in WUE can signal shifts in ecosystem resilience and that water-limited forests are sensitive to temperature- and precipitation-driven drought stress. Considering that forests with low resilience will be poised for dieback in the future if climates continue to feature rising temperatures without compensating increases in precipitation, it is becoming increasingly important that we understand drought vulnerability at the ecosystem level and how it changes over time with climate conditions.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Drought stress
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
drought resistance
ecological monitoring
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
remote sensing
parasitic diseases
disturbance ecology
Ecosystem
Precipitation
Water-use efficiency
Resilience (network)
California forests
Ecosystem level
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Ecology
Mortality rate
fungi
food and beverages
Forestry
lcsh:QK900-989
Tree (data structure)
MODIS
lcsh:Plant ecology
Environmental science
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19994907
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Forests; Volume 8; Issue 10; Pages: 365
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....123be7c1b1eff4cb68464695e0f5bde7
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3390/f8100365