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1. Six hundred years of South American tree rings reveal an increase in severe hydroclimatic events since mid-20th century

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2002411117  

   Morales, Mariano S. ; Cook, Edward R. ; Barichivich, Jonathan ; Christie, Duncan A. ; Villalba, Ricardo ; LeQuesne, Carlos ; Srur, Ana M. ; Ferrero, M. Eugenia ; González-Reyes, Álvaro ; Couvreux, Fleur ; et al ( July 2020 , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   South American (SA) societies are highly vulnerable to droughts and pluvials, but lack of long-term climate observations severely limits our understanding of the global processes driving climatic variability in the region. The number and quality of SA climate-sensitive tree ring chronologies have significantly increased in recent decades, now providing a robust network of 286 records for characterizing hydroclimate variability since 1400 CE. We combine this network with a self-calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI) dataset to derive the South American Drought Atlas (SADA) over the continent south of 12°S. The gridded annual reconstruction of austral summer scPDSI is the most spatially complete estimate of SA hydroclimate to date, and well matches past historical dry/wet events. Relating the SADA to the Australia–New Zealand Drought Atlas, sea surface temperatures and atmospheric pressure fields, we determine that the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) are strongly associated with spatially extended droughts and pluvials over the SADA domain during the past several centuries. SADA also exhibits more extended severe droughts and extreme pluvials since the mid-20th century. Extensive droughts are consistent with the observed 20th-century trend toward positive SAM anomalies concomitant with the weakening of midlatitude Westerlies, while low-level moisture transport intensified by global warming has favored extreme rainfall across the subtropics. The SADA thus provides a long-term context for observed hydroclimatic changes and for 21st-century Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections that suggest SA will experience more frequent/severe droughts and rainfall events as a consequence of increasing greenhouse gas emissions. 

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2. Ecosystem-Scale Rainfall Manipulation in a Piñon-Juniper Forest at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico: Meteorological Data (2006-2013 )

   https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/72e87ec43be131a9be28c2dbfddae29c  

   Pockman, William ; McDowell, Nathan ( January 2015 , Environmental Data Initiative)

   Climate models predict that water limited regions around the world will become drier and warmer in the near future, including southwestern North America. We developed a large-scale experimental system that allows testing of the ecosystem impacts of precipitation changes. Four treatments were applied to 1600 m2 plots (40 m × 40 m), each with three replicates in a piñon pine (Pinus edulis) and juniper (Juniper monosperma) ecosystem. These species have extensive root systems, requiring large-scale manipulation to effectively alter soil water availability.  Treatments consisted of: 1) irrigation plots that receive supplemental water additions, 2) drought plots that receive 55% of ambient rainfall, 3) cover-control plots that receive ambient precipitation, but allow determination of treatment infrastructure artifacts, and 4) ambient control plots. Our drought structures effectively reduced soil water potential and volumetric water content compared to the ambient, cover-control, and water addition plots. Drought and cover control plots experienced an average increase in maximum soil and air temperature at ground level of 1-4° C during the growing season compared to ambient plots, and concurrent short-term diurnal increases in maximum air temperature were also observed directly above and below plastic structures. Our drought and irrigation treatments significantly influenced tree predawn water potential, sap-flow, and net photosynthesis, with drought treatment trees exhibiting significant decreases in physiological function compared to ambient and irrigated trees. Supplemental irrigation resulted in a significant increase in both plant water potential and xylem sap-flow compared to trees in the other treatments. This experimental design effectively allows manipulation of plant water stress at the ecosystem scale, permits a wide range of drought conditions, and provides prolonged drought conditions comparable to historical droughts in the past – drought events for which wide-spread mortality in both these species was observed.A micrometeorological station was used to document the climatic conditions at the study site.  Monitoring the ambient environment in this way allowed us to more easily determine which tree growth responses were driven by changes in the native climate as opposed to those resulting from the rainfall manipulation treatments.  Environmental factors such as temperature, relative humidity, and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) have a huge impact on the physiological processes that are being explored in this project.  The data collected by the station created a local climatic record which was needed to provide the context in which the treatment effects can be examined and sensor readings can be interpreted. 

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3. Local temporal trajectories explain population‐level responses to climate change in saguaro ( Carnegiea gigantea )

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2844  

   Rodríguez‐Buriticá, Susana ; Winkler, Daniel E. ; Webb, Robert H. ; Venable, D. Lawrence ( August 2019 , Ecosphere)

   Population demography is typically assumed to be strongly influenced by climatic factors, particularly with succulent plants and cacti. The saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) is a long‐lived columnar cactus of the Sonoran Desert that experiences episodic recruitment and mortality. Previous studies have attributed long‐term changes in saguaro populations to climatic factors, including increased germination and establishment during wet periods and mortality and reduced establishment during droughts and extreme freezes. We used a 48‐yr data set of marked individuals at the Desert Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, to test the hypothesis that local, temporal population trajectories are mediated by topographic heterogeneity that interacts with fluctuating climatic conditions. We tested the influence of local slope and aspect vs. climatic variability on a population of saguaro using >5800 marked individuals that have been measured since 1964. We examined the relationship between demography and climatic variables (drought, precipitation, and extreme temperatures) and found significant differences in growth and survival among aspects and among census periods. Saguaro population growth was higher during wet and cool periods (e.g., 1964–1970), and changes in age structures suggest that topographic differences interact with climatic fluctuations to produce unexpected demographic patterns including large recruitment events during periods of relatively unfavorable climate conditions. Our results highlight the importance of long‐term data to detect demographic responses to climate that could not be predicted from short‐term studies of plant physiology and population demography.

    

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4. Forest productivity recovery or collapse? Model‐data integration insights on drought‐induced tipping points

   https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16867  

   Au, J. ; Bloom, A. A. ; Parazoo, N. C. ; Deans, R. M. ; Wong, C. Y. ; Houlton, B. Z. ; Magney, T. S. ( October 2023 , Global Change Biology)

   More frequent and severe droughts are driving increased forest mortality around the globe. We urgently need to describe and predict how drought affects forest carbon cycling and identify thresholds of environmental stress that trigger ecosystem collapse. Quantifying the effects of drought at an ecosystem level is complex because dynamic climate–plant relationships can cause rapid and/or prolonged shifts in carbon balance. We employ the CARbon DAta MOdel fraMework (CARDAMOM) to investigate legacy effects of drought on forest carbon pools and fluxes. Our Bayesian model‐data fusion approach uses tower observed meteorological forcing and carbon fluxes to determine the response and sensitivity of aboveground and belowground ecological processes associated with the 2012–2015 California drought. Our study area is a mid‐montane mixed conifer forest in the Southern Sierras. CARDAMOM constrained with gross primary productivity (GPP) estimates covering 2011–2017 show a ~75% reduction in GPP, compared to negligible GPP change when constrained with 2011 only. Precipitation across 2012–2015 was 45% (474 mm) lower than the historical average and drove a cascading depletion in soil moisture and carbon pools (foliar, labile, roots, and litter). Adding 157 mm during an especially stressful year (2014, annual rainfall = 293 mm) led to a smaller depletion of water and carbon pools, steering the ecosystem away from a state of GPP tipping‐point collapse to recovery. We present novel process‐driven insights that demonstrate the sensitivity of GPP collapse to ecosystem foliar carbon and soil moisture states—showing that the full extent of GPP response takes several years to arise. Thus, long‐term changes in soil moisture and carbon pools can provide a mechanistic link between drought and forest mortality. Our study provides an example for how key precipitation threshold ranges can influence forest productivity, making them useful for monitoring and predicting forest mortality events.

    

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5. Temperature Across Vegetation Canopy-Water-Soil Interfaces Is Modulated by Hydroperiod and Extreme Weather in Coastal Wetlands

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.852901  

   Zhao, Xiaochen ; Rivera-Monroy, Victor H. ; Li, Chunyan ; Vargas-Lopez, Ivan A. ; Rohli, Robert V. ; Xue, Z. George ; Castañeda-Moya, Edward ; Coronado-Molina, Carlos ( May 2022 , Frontiers in Marine Science)

   Environmental temperature is a widely used variable to describe weather and climate conditions. The use of temperature anomalies to identify variations in climate and weather systems makes temperature a key variable to evaluate not only climate variability but also shifts in ecosystem structural and functional properties. In contrast to terrestrial ecosystems, the assessment of regional temperature anomalies in coastal wetlands is more complex since the local temperature is modulated by hydrology and weather. Thus, it is unknown how the regional free-air temperature (T Free ) is coupled to local temperature anomalies, which can vary across interfaces among vegetation canopy, water, and soil that modify the wetland microclimate regime. Here, we investigated the temperature differences (offsets) at those three interfaces in mangrove-saltmarsh ecotones in coastal Louisiana and South Florida in the northern Gulf of Mexico (2017–2019). We found that the canopy offset (range: 0.2–1.6°C) between T Free and below-canopy temperature (T Canopy ) was caused by the canopy buffering effect. The similar offset values in both Louisiana and Florida underscore the role of vegetation in regulating near-ground energy fluxes. Overall, the inundation depth did not influence soil temperature (T Soil ). The interaction between frequency and duration of inundation, however, significantly modulated T Soil given the presence of water on the wetland soil surface, thus attenuating any short- or long-term changes in the T Canopy and T Free . Extreme weather events—including cold fronts and tropical cyclones—induced high defoliation and weakened canopy buffering, resulting in long-term changes in canopy or soil offsets. These results highlight the need to measure simultaneously the interaction between ecological and climatic processes to reduce uncertainty when modeling macro- and microclimate in coastal areas under a changing climate, especially given the current local temperature anomalies data scarcity. This work advances the coupling of Earth system models to climate models to forecast regional and global climate change and variability along coastal areas. 

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