Abstract. Ecosystems are open systems that exchange matter and energy with theirenvironment. They differ in their efficiency in doing so as a result of theirlocation on Earth, structure and disturbance, including anthropogenic legacy.Entropy has been proposed to be an effective metric to describe thesedifferences as it relates energy use efficiencies of ecosystems to theirthermodynamic environment (i.e., temperature) but has rarely been studied tounderstand how ecosystems with different disturbance legacies respond whenconfronted with environmental variability. We studied three sites in alongleaf pine ecosystem with varying levels of anthropogenic legacy and plantfunctional diversity, all of which were exposed to extreme drought. Wequantified radiative (effrad), metabolic and overall entropychanges – as well as changes in exported to imported entropy(effflux) in response to drought disturbance and environmentalvariability using 24 total years of eddy covariance data (8 years per site).We show that structural and functional characteristics contribute todifferences in energy use efficiencies at the three study sites. Our resultsdemonstrate that ecosystem function during drought is modulated by decreasedabsorbed solar energy and variation in the partitioning of energy and entropyexports owing to differences in site enhanced vegetation index and/or soilwater content. Low effrad and metabolic entropy as well as slowadjustment of effflux at the anthropogenically altered siteprolonged its recovery from drought by approximately 1 year. In contrast,stands with greater plant functional diversity (i.e., the ones that includedboth C3 and C4 species) adjusted their entropy exports when facedwith drought, which accelerated their recovery. Our study provides a pathforward for using entropy to determine ecosystem function across differentglobal ecosystems.
Terrestrial ecosystems obtain energy in the form of carbon‐containing molecules. Quantifying energy acquisition and dissipation throughout an ecosystem may be useful for describing their resistance and resilience to disturbances. Three longleaf pine savannas with different vegetation composition—a result of variation in soil moisture and land use legacy—were used as a case study to test energy‐based metrics of ecosystem metabolic function. Available energy from gross ecosystem exchange of CO2and its dissipation into metabolic energy density (EM) and energy storage were used to identify differences in drought recovery over an 8‐year period. Sites with higher plant functional diversity in the understory stored more energy and lowered their EMby ~20% when adapting to drought. In contrast, the site with greater abundance of woody understory and overstory species relied on stored energy twice as often as the more diverse sites. The absence of native understory species, due to anthropogenic legacy, prolonged ecosystem‐scale drought recovery by 1 year. This study provides the tools to understand differences in site metabolic energy dynamics and has the potential to identify site characteristics that indicate greater vulnerability to disturbances. Metabolic energy density can be applied to any global ecosystem and provides a first step to describe coupled carbon and energy allocation in ecosystems, which may be used to further refine ecological theory and its management implications.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10456381
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
- Volume:
- 125
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2169-8953
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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