Increasing aridity will not offset CO₂ fertilization in fast‐growing eucalypts with access to deep soil water

Abstract

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Elevated CO2 alleviates adverse effects of drought on plant water relations and photosynthesis: A global meta‐analysis

“…First, although we found that eCO 2 improved plant water status, of which the exact mechanisms remain uncertain. One potential candidate is that eCO 2 may affect the rooting depth and vertical distribution of roots, which determine the water acquisition capacity of roots (Nadal‐Sala et al, 2021; Wullschleger et al, 2002). Second, eCO 2 often increases non‐structural carbohydrates, which may allow plants to increase osmotic adjustment and maintain a higher water potential (Miranda‐Apodaca et al, 2018).…”

“…First, although we found that eCO 2 improved plant water status, of which the exact mechanisms remain uncertain. One potential candidate is that eCO 2 may affect the rooting depth and vertical distribution of roots, which determine the water acquisition capacity of roots (Nadal-Sala et al, 2021;Wullschleger et al, 2002).…”

Global Self‐Similar Scaling of Terrestrial Carbon With Aridity

“…The emergence of an approximate, but apparently robust scaling of carbon stock with aridity at the global scale may have significant practical implications. Given the strong controls of aridity on soil nutrient availability, plant growth, and carbon fluxes, identified by CO 2 fertilization experiments, long‐term observations, and large‐scale modeling (Brookshire & Weaver, 2015; Green et al., 2019; Nadal‐Sala et al., 2021; Oren et al., 2001), as well as its robustness across climates, it is logical to surmise that the global carbon‐aridity relationships discovered here will also hold in future climates. If this was the case, expressing the carbon stock distribution conditional on the hydroclimatic regime as a function of the dryness index would allow us to estimate trends of future global carbon stocks only based on the dryness index projections.…”

Response of Ecosystem Productivity to High Vapor Pressure Deficit and Low Soil Moisture: Lessons Learned From the Global Eddy‐Covariance Observations

“…Second, although there have been previous synthesis studies on assessing the impacts of VPD and SM on ecosystem productivity, we lack a global database and associated mechanisms of how VPD and SM limitations vary across climatic gradients and plant functional types (PFTs). In addition, deep SM and groundwater are very important water resources for woody vegetation in semi‐arid and arid regions and forests, particularly when surface SM is depleted and becomes unavailable to plants (Baldocchi & Xu, 2007; Nadal‐Sala et al., 2021; Xu, Ji, et al., 2017; Xu, Yu, et al., 2017). Despite this, little is known about the impacts of SM observations made at different soil layers on attributing the ecosystem productivity.…”