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Agrivoltaics (AV), conceived in the early 1980s, promise to ameliorate competition between solar energy generation and crop production for arable land. The premise behind AV is that excess light not used in photosynthesis can be used for energy production. There are opportunities for maximizing photosynthesis by targeting particular wavelengths (e.g., red) to be transmitted through semi‐transparent photovoltaic (PV) cells depending on crop type and environmental conditions. Camporese and Abou Najm (2022,https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002900) developed a numerical model that accommodates the various wavelengths of the incoming light spectrum to predict photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, and transpiration. This commentary seeks to place those and other recent findings about the modifications to the plant micro‐environment by PV cells in the context of maximum attainable aboveground biomass.

In drylands, runoff during storms redistributes water and nutrients from bare soil areas to vegetated patches, subsidizing vegetation with additional resources. The extent of this redistribution depends on the interplay between surface roughness and permeability; greater permeability in vegetated patches promotes run‐on to vegetation, but greater surface roughness diverts runoff, producing tortuous flow paths that bypass vegetation. Here, this interplay is examined in virtual experiments using the 2D Saint Venant Equations to measure runoff connectivity. Flowpaths are delineated using tracers advected by the flow. Distances between tracer sources and sinks along flowpaths measure hydrologic connectivity at two lengthscales: connectivity to the hillslope outlet and within‐slope source‐sink connectivity. Differences between these connectivity lengthscales indicate how flow may “by‐pass” vegetated patches within hillslopes. At the hillslope scale, a derived power‐law relation between the runoff coefficient and outlet connectivity describes hillslope water losses, providing a foundation for identifying landscapes likely to shed water.

The significance of phloem hydrodynamics to plant mortality and survival, which impacts ecosystem‐scale carbon and water cycling, is not in dispute. The phloem provides the conduits for products of photosynthesis to be transported to different parts of the plant for consumption or storage. The Mnch pressure flow hypothesis (PFH) is the leading framework to mathematically represent this transport. It assumes that osmosis provides the necessary pressure differences to drive water and sucrose within the phloem. Mathematical models utilizing the PFH approximate the phloem by a relatively rigid slender semi‐permeable tube. However, the phloem consists of living cells that contract and expand in response to pressure fluctuations. The effect of membrane elasticity on osmotically driven sucrose front speed has rarely been considered and frames the scope here. Laboratory experiments were conducted to elucidate the elastic‐to‐plastic pressure‐deformation relation in membranes and their effect on sucrose front speeds. It is demonstrated that membrane elasticity acts to retard the sucrose front speed. The retardation emerges because of two effects: (a) part of the osmotic pressure is diverted to perform mechanical work to expand the membrane instead of pressurizing water, and (b) expansion of the membrane reduces the sucrose concentration driving osmotic potential due to volume increases and concomitant dilution effects. These results offer a novel perspective about the much discussed presence of sieve plates throughout the phloem acting as structural expansion dampers.

The global air‐sea CO₂flux (F) impacts and is impacted by a plethora of climate‐related processes operating at multiple time scales. In bulk mass transfer formulations, F is driven by physico‐ and bio‐chemical factors such as the air‐sea partial pressure difference (∆pCO₂), gas transfer velocity, sea surface temperature, and salinity–all varying at multiple time scales. To de‐convolve the impact of these factors on variability in F at different time scales, time‐resolved estimates of F were computed using a global data set assembled between 1988 and 2015. The F anomalies were defined as temporal deviations from the 28‐year time‐averaged value. Spectral analysis revealed four dominant timescales of variability in F–subseasonal, seasonal, interannual, and decadal with relative amplitude differences varying across regions. A second‐order Taylor series expansion was then conducted along these four timescales to separate drivers across differing regions. The analysis showed that on subseasonal timescales, wind speed variability explains some 66% of the global F anomaly and is the dominant driver. On seasonal, interannual, and decadal timescales, the ∆pCO₂effect controlled by the ∆pCO₂anomaly, explained much of the F anomaly. On decadal timescales, the F anomaly was almost entirely governed by the ∆pCO₂effect with large contributions from high latitudes. The main drivers across timescales also dominate the regional F anomaly, particularly in the mid‐high latitude regions. Finally, the driver of the ∆pCO₂effect was closely connected with the relative strength of atmospheric pCO₂and the nonthermal component of oceanic pCO₂anomaly associated with dissolved inorganic carbon and alkalinity.

Water inside plants forms a continuous chain from water in soils to the water evaporating from leaf surfaces. Failures in this chain result in reduced transpiration and photosynthesis and are caused by soil drying and/or cavitation‐induced xylem embolism. Xylem embolism and plant hydraulic failure share several analogies to ‘catastrophe theory’ in dynamical systems. These catastrophes are often represented in the physiological and ecological literature as tipping points when control variables exogenous (e.g., soil water potential) or endogenous (e.g., leaf water potential) to the plant are allowed to vary on time scales much longer than time scales associated with cavitation events. Here, plant hydraulics viewed from the perspective of catastrophes at multiple spatial scales is considered with attention to bubble expansion within a xylem conduit, organ‐scale vulnerability to embolism, and whole‐plant biomass as a proxy for transpiration and hydraulic function. The hydraulic safety‐efficiency tradeoff, hydraulic segmentation and maximum plant transpiration are examined using this framework. Underlying mechanisms for hydraulic failure at fine scales such as pit membranes and cell‐wall mechanics, intermediate scales such as xylem network properties and at larger scales such as soil–tree hydraulic pathways are discussed. Understudied areas in plant hydraulics are also flagged where progress is urgently needed.

The terrestrial net ecosystem productivity (NEP) has increased during the past three decades, but the mechanisms responsible are still unclear. We analyzed 17 years (2001–2017) of eddy‐covariance measurements of NEP, evapotranspiration (ET) and light and water use efficiency from a boreal coniferous forest in Southern Finland for trends and inter‐annual variability (IAV). The forest was a mean annual carbon sink (252 [42] gC ), and NEP increased at rate +6.4–7.0 gC (or ca. +2.5% ) during the period. This was attributed to the increasing gross‐primary productivity GPP and occurred without detectable change in ET. The start of annual carbon uptake period was advanced by 0.7 d , and increase in GPP and NEP outside the main growing season contributed ca. one‐third and one‐fourth of the annual trend, respectively. Meteorological factors were responsible for the IAV of fluxes but did not explain the long‐term trends. The growing season GPP trend was strongest in ample light during the peak growing season. Using a multi‐layer ecosystem model, we showed that direct fertilization effect diminishes when moving from leaf to ecosystem, and only 30–40% of the observed ecosystem GPP increase could be attributed to . The increasing trend in leaf‐area index (LAI), stimulated by forest thinning in 2002, was the main driver of the enhanced GPP and NEP of the mid‐rotation managed forest. It also compensated for the decrease of mean leaf stomatal conductance with increasing and LAI, explaining the apparent proportionality between observed GPP and trends. The results emphasize that attributing trends to their physical and physiological drivers is challenged by strong IAV, and uncertainty of LAI and species composition changes due to the dynamic flux footprint. The results enlighten the underlying mechanisms responsible for the increasing terrestrial carbon uptake in the boreal zone.

How large turbulent eddies influence non‐closure of the surface energy balance is an active research topic that cannot be uncovered by the mean continuity equation in isolation. It is demonstrated here that asymmetric turbulent flux transport of heat and water vapor by sweeps and ejections of large eddies under unstable atmospheric stability conditions reduce fluxes. Such asymmetry causes positive gradients in the third‐order moments in the turbulent flux budget equations, primarily attributed to substantially reduced flux contributions by sweeps and sustained large flux contributions by ejections. Small‐scale surface heterogeneity in heating generates ejecting eddies with larger air temperature variance than sweeping eddies, causing asymmetric flux transport in the atmospheric surface layer. Changes in asymmetry with increasing instability are congruent with observed increases in the surface energy balance non‐closure. To assess the contributions of asymmetric flux transport by large eddies to the non‐closure requires two eddy covariance systems on the tower to measure the gradients of the turbulent heat flux and other third‐order moments.

In the atmospheric surface layer (ASL), a characteristic wavelength marking the limit between energy‐containing and inertial subrange scales can be defined from the vertical velocity spectrum. This wavelength is related to the integral length scale of turbulence, used in turbulence closure approaches for the ASL. The scaling laws describing the displacement of this wavelength with changes in atmospheric stability have eluded theoretical treatment and are considered here. Two derivations are proposed for mildly unstable to mildly stable ASL flows one that only makes use of normalizing constraints on the vertical velocity variance along with idealized spectral shapes featuring production to inertial subrange regimes, while another utilizes a co‐spectral budget with a return‐to‐isotropy closure. The expressions agree with field experiments and permit inference of the variations of the wavelength with atmospheric stability. This methodology offers a new perspective for numerical and theoretical modeling of ASL flows and for experimental design.

The sensitivity of soil carbon dynamics to climate change is a major uncertainty in carbon cycle models. Of particular interest is the response of soil biogeochemical cycles to variability in hydroclimatic states and the related quantification of soil memory. Toward this goal, the power spectra of soil hydrologic and biogeochemical states were analyzed using measurements of soil temperature, moisture, oxygen, and carbon dioxide at two sites. Power spectra indicated multiscale power law scaling across subhourly to annual timescales. Precipitation fluctuations were most strongly expressed in the soil biogeochemical signals at monthly to annual timescales. Soil moisture and temperature fluctuations were comparable in strength at one site, while temperature was dominant at the other. The effect of soil hydrologic, thermal, and biogeochemical processes on gas concentration variability was evidenced by low spectral entropy relative to the white noise character of precipitation. A full mass balance model was unable to capture high‐frequency soil temperature influence, indicating a gap in commonly used model assumptions. A linearized model was shown to capture the main features of the observed and modeled gas concentration spectra and demonstrated how the means and variances of soil moisture and temperature interact to produce the gas concentration spectra. Breakpoints in the spectra corresponded to the mean rate of gas efflux, providing a first‐order estimate of the soil biogeochemical integral timescale (∼1 min). These methods can be used to identify biogeochemical system dynamics to develop robust, process‐based soil biogeochemistry models that capture variability in addition to long‐term mean values.