Diminishing carryover benefits of earlier spring vegetation growth

Xu Lian¹, Josep Peñuelas^{2

3}, Youngryel Ryu⁴, Shilong Piao^{5

6}, Trevor F Keenan^{7

8}, Jianing Fang⁹, Kailiang Yu¹⁰, Anping Chen¹¹, Yao Zhang⁵, Pierre Gentine^{9

12}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. xl3179@columbia.edu.
² CREAF, Barcelona, Spain.
³ CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ Department of Landscape Architecture and Rural Systems Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.
⁵ Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
⁷ Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁸ Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁹ Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
¹¹ Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
¹² Center for Learning the Earth with Artificial intelligence and Physics (LEAP), Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.

PMID: 38172284
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02272-w

Diminishing carryover benefits of earlier spring vegetation growth

Xu Lian et al. Nat Ecol Evol. 2024 Feb.

. 2024 Feb;8(2):218-228.

doi: 10.1038/s41559-023-02272-w. Epub 2024 Jan 3.

Authors

Xu Lian¹, Josep Peñuelas^{2

3}, Youngryel Ryu⁴, Shilong Piao^{5

6}, Trevor F Keenan^{7

8}, Jianing Fang⁹, Kailiang Yu¹⁰, Anping Chen¹¹, Yao Zhang⁵, Pierre Gentine^{9

12}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. xl3179@columbia.edu.
² CREAF, Barcelona, Spain.
³ CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ Department of Landscape Architecture and Rural Systems Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.
⁵ Institute of Carbon Neutrality, Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
⁷ Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁸ Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁹ Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
¹¹ Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
¹² Center for Learning the Earth with Artificial intelligence and Physics (LEAP), Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.

PMID: 38172284
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-023-02272-w

Abstract

Spring vegetation growth can benefit summer growth by increasing foliage area and carbon sequestration potential, or impair it by consuming additional resources needed for sustaining subsequent growth. However, the prevalent driving mechanism and its temporal changes remain unknown. Using satellite observations and long-term atmospheric CO₂ records, here we show a weakening trend of the linkage between spring and summer vegetation growth/productivity in the Northern Hemisphere during 1982-2021. This weakening is driven by warmer and more extreme hot weather that becomes unfavourable for peak-season growth, shifting peak plant functioning away from earlier periods. This is further exacerbated by seasonally growing ecosystem water stress due to reduced water supply and enhanced water demand. Our finding suggests that beneficial carryover effects of spring growth on summer growth are diminishing or even reversing, acting as an early warning sign of the ongoing shift of climatic effects from stimulating to suppressing plant photosynthesis during the early to peak seasons.

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References

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Diminishing carryover benefits of earlier spring vegetation growth

Affiliations

Diminishing carryover benefits of earlier spring vegetation growth

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Abstract

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