Accounting for herbaceous communities in process-based models will advance our understanding of "grassy" ecosystems

Kevin R Wilcox^{1

2}, Anping Chen³, Meghan L Avolio⁴, Ethan E Butler⁵, Scott Collins⁶, Rosie Fisher⁷, Trevor Keenan⁸, Nancy Y Kiang⁹, Alan K Knapp³, Sally E Koerner¹, Lara Kueppers⁸, Guopeng Liang⁵, Eva Lieungh¹⁰, Michael Loik¹¹, Yiqi Luo¹², Ben Poulter¹³, Peter Reich^{5

14}, Katherine Renwick¹⁵, Melinda D Smith³, Anthony Walker¹⁶, Ensheng Weng^{9

17}, Kimberly J Komatsu¹

Affiliations

¹ University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA.
² University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA.
³ Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
⁴ Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
⁵ Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.
⁶ Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
⁷ CICERO Centre for International Cimate Research, Forskningsparken, Oslo, Norway.
⁸ Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA.
⁹ NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA.
¹⁰ Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
¹¹ Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, USA.
¹² School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
¹³ Biospheric Sciences Lab, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
¹⁴ Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia.
¹⁵ US Forest Service Northern Region, Missoula, Montana, USA.
¹⁶ Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA.
¹⁷ Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.

PMID: 37814910
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16950

Review

Accounting for herbaceous communities in process-based models will advance our understanding of "grassy" ecosystems

Kevin R Wilcox et al. Glob Chang Biol. 2023 Dec.

. 2023 Dec;29(23):6453-6477.

doi: 10.1111/gcb.16950. Epub 2023 Oct 10.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA.
² University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, USA.
³ Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
⁴ Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
⁵ Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.
⁶ Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
⁷ CICERO Centre for International Cimate Research, Forskningsparken, Oslo, Norway.
⁸ Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA.
⁹ NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA.
¹⁰ Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
¹¹ Department of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, USA.
¹² School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA.
¹³ Biospheric Sciences Lab, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.
¹⁴ Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia.
¹⁵ US Forest Service Northern Region, Missoula, Montana, USA.
¹⁶ Environmental Sciences Division and Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA.
¹⁷ Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.

PMID: 37814910
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16950

Abstract

Grassland and other herbaceous communities cover significant portions of Earth's terrestrial surface and provide many critical services, such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, and food production. Forecasts of global change impacts on these services will require predictive tools, such as process-based dynamic vegetation models. Yet, model representation of herbaceous communities and ecosystems lags substantially behind that of tree communities and forests. The limited representation of herbaceous communities within models arises from two important knowledge gaps: first, our empirical understanding of the principles governing herbaceous vegetation dynamics is either incomplete or does not provide mechanistic information necessary to drive herbaceous community processes with models; second, current model structure and parameterization of grass and other herbaceous plant functional types limits the ability of models to predict outcomes of competition and growth for herbaceous vegetation. In this review, we provide direction for addressing these gaps by: (1) presenting a brief history of how vegetation dynamics have been developed and incorporated into earth system models, (2) reporting on a model simulation activity to evaluate current model capability to represent herbaceous vegetation dynamics and ecosystem function, and (3) detailing several ecological properties and phenomena that should be a focus for both empiricists and modelers to improve representation of herbaceous vegetation in models. Together, empiricists and modelers can improve representation of herbaceous ecosystem processes within models. In so doing, we will greatly enhance our ability to forecast future states of the earth system, which is of high importance given the rapid rate of environmental change on our planet.

Keywords: biogeochemistry; ecology; ecophysiology; plant competition; plant growth; process-based models; vegetation demographic models.

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References

REFERENCES

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Accounting for herbaceous communities in process-based models will advance our understanding of "grassy" ecosystems

Affiliations

Accounting for herbaceous communities in process-based models will advance our understanding of "grassy" ecosystems

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

References

REFERENCES

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MeSH terms

Grants and funding

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources