Ecosystem fluxes during drought and recovery in an experimental forest

• DOI: 10.1126/science.abj6789
• Publication Date: 2021-12-16T18:55:32Z
• Authors: Christiane Werner; Laura K. Meredith; S. Nemiah Ladd; Johannes Ingrisch; Angelika Kübert; Joost van Haren; Michael Bahn; Kinzie Bailey; Ines Bamberger; Matthias Beyer; Daniel Blomdahl; Joseph Byron; Erik Daber; Jason Deleeuw; Michaela A. Dippold; Jane Fudyma; Juliana Gil-Loaiza; Linnea K. Honeker; Jia Hu; Jianbei Huang; Thomas Klüpfel; Jordan Krechmer; Jürgen Kreuzwieser; Kathrin Kühnhammer; Marco M. Lehmann; Kathiravan Meeran; Pawel K. Misztal; Wei-Ren Ng; Eva Pfannerstill; Giovanni Pugliese; Gemma Purser; Joseph Roscioli; Lingling Shi; Malak Tfaily; Jonathan Williams
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 03 medical and health sciences; 13. Climate action; 577; 15. Life on land; 6. Clean water

An experimental forest ecosystem drought

Drought is affecting many of the world’ s forested ecosystems, but it has proved challenging to develop an ecosystem-level mechanistic understanding of the ways that drought affects carbon and water fluxes through forest ecosystems. Werner et al . used an experimental approach by imposing an artificial drought on an entire enclosed ecosystem: the Biosphere 2 Tropical Rainforest in Arizona (see the Perspective by Eisenhauer and Weigelt). The authors show that ecosystem-scale plant responses to drought depend on distinct plant functional groups, differing in their water-use strategies and their position in the forest canopy. The balance of these plant functional groups drives changes in carbon and water fluxes, as well as the release of volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere. —AMS