Climate models predict at least another 1.5°C warming in the next 75 years. This warming drives increased atmospheric drying and a global increase in the severity and duration of ecological drought. Vegetation has the capacity to reduce microclimate temperatures and atmospheric aridity. All species of plants create shade, move water, evapotranspire, humidify the air around them, and affect the temperature and vapour pressure deficit of the environment. Vegetation can thus act as a nature‐based solution to warming and atmospheric drying. These microclimate modifications likely depend on the traits, functional groups and diversity of the plant community. Vegetative feedbacks on microclimate are strong enough to buffer some plants against the negative impacts of warming and drying (e.g. facilitation).
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Abstract Synthesis : Here we present, for the first time, a trait‐based framework that can be applied across study systems for assessing microclimate temperature and humidity under vegetation. This framework includes multiple new hypotheses for future work in this area. We emphasize that a systematic examination of trait–microclimate relationships will enable us to use vegetation as a nature‐based solution to warming and atmospheric drying in a changing climate.Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 24, 2025 -
Abstract Climate models predict more frequent, prolonged, and extreme droughts in the future. Therefore, drought experiments varying in amount and duration across a range of biogeographical scenarios provide a powerful tool for estimating how drought will affect future ecosystems. Past experimental work has been focused on the manipulation of meteorological drought: Rainout shelters are used to reduce precipitation inputs into the soil. This work has been instrumental in our ability to predict the expected effects of altered rainfall. But what about the nonrainfall components of drought? We review recent literature on the co-occurring and sometimes divergent impacts of atmospheric drying and meteorological drying. We discuss how manipulating meteorological drought or rainfall alone may not predict future changes in plant productivity, composition, or species interactions that result from climate change induced droughts. We make recommendations for how to improve these experiments using manipulations of relative humidity.
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Abstract Global surface temperatures are projected to increase in the future; this will modify regional precipitation regimes and increase global atmospheric drying. Despite many drought studies examining the consequences of reduced precipitation, there are few experimental studies exploring plant responses to atmospheric drying via relative humidity and vapor pressure deficit (VPD). We examined eight native California perennial grass species grown in pots in a greenhouse in Los Angeles, California for 34 weeks. All pots were well‐watered for 21 weeks, at which point we reduced watering to zero and recorded daily growth and dormancy for 3 weeks. We used this information to better understand the drought tolerance of our species in a larger soil drying × atmospheric drying experiment. In this larger experiment, we grew all eight species together in outdoor mesocosms and measured changes in community composition after 4 years of growth. Soil drying in our small pot experiment mirrored compositional shifts in the larger experiment. Namely, our most drought‐tolerant species in our pot experiment was
Poa secunda , due to a summer dormancy strategy. Similarly, the grass community shifted towardP. secunda in the driest soils asP. secunda was mostly unaffected by either soil drying or atmospheric drying. We found that some species responded strongly to soil drying (Elymus glaucus ,Festuca idahoensis , andHordeum b. californicum ), while others responded strongly to atmospheric drying (Bromus carinatus andStipa cernua ). As result, community composition shifted in different and interacting ways in response to soil drying, atmospheric drying, and their combination. Further study of community responses to increasing atmospheric aridity is an essential next step to predicting the future consequences of climate change. -
Abstract An exponential rise in the atmospheric vapour pressure deficit (VPD) is among the most consequential impacts of climate change in terrestrial ecosystems. Rising VPD has negative and cascading effects on nearly all aspects of plant function including photosynthesis, water status, growth and survival. These responses are exacerbated by land–atmosphere interactions that couple VPD to soil water and govern the evolution of drought, affecting a range of ecosystem services including carbon uptake, biodiversity, the provisioning of water resources and crop yields. However, despite the global nature of this phenomenon, research on how to incorporate these impacts into resilient management regimes is largely in its infancy, due in part to the entanglement of VPD trends with those of other co‐evolving climate drivers. Here, we review the mechanistic bases of VPD impacts at a range of spatial scales, paying particular attention to the independent and interactive influence of VPD in the context of other environmental changes. We then evaluate the consequences of these impacts within key management contexts, including water resources, croplands, wildfire risk mitigation and management of natural grasslands and forests. We conclude with recommendations describing how management regimes could be altered to mitigate the otherwise highly deleterious consequences of rising VPD.
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Abstract Climate change alters mean global surface temperatures, precipitation regimes, and atmospheric moisture. Resultant drought affects the composition and diversity of terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. To date, there have been no assessments of the combined impacts of reduced precipitation and atmospheric drying on functional trait distributions of any species in an outdoor experiment. Here, we examined whether soil and atmospheric drought affected the functional traits of a focal grass species (
Poa secunda ) growing in monoculture and eight‐species grass communities in outdoor mesocosms. We focused on specific leaf area (SLA), leaf area, stomatal density, root:shoot ratio, and fine root:coarse root ratio responses. Leaf area and overall growth were reduced with soil drying. Root:shoot ratio only increased forP. secunda growing in monoculture under combined atmospheric and soil drought. Plant energy allocation strategy (measured using principal components) differed whenP. secunda was grown in combined soil and atmospheric drought conditions compared with soil drought alone. Given a lack of outdoor manipulations of this kind, our results emphasize the importance of atmospheric drying on functional trait responses more broadly. We suggest that drought methods focused purely on soil water inputs may be imprecisely predicting drought effects on other terrestrial organisms as well (other plants, arthropods, and higher trophic levels).