Policies for climate mitigation on land rarely acknowledge biophysical factors, such as reflectivity, evaporation, and surface roughness. Yet such factors can alter temperatures much more than carbon sequestration does, and often in a conflicting way. We outline a framework for examining biophysical factors in mitigation policies and provide some best-practice recommendations based on that framework. Tropical projects-avoided deforestation, forest restoration, and afforestation-provide the greatest climate value, because carbon storage and biophysics align to cool the Earth. In contrast, the climate benefits of carbon storage are often counteracted in boreal and other snow-covered regions, where darker trees trap more heat than snow does. Managers can increase the climate benefit of some forest projects by using more reflective and deciduous species and through urban forestry projects that reduce energy use. Ignoring biophysical interactions could result in millions of dollars being invested in some mitigation projects that provide little climate benefit or, worse, are counter-productive.

Vegetation changes, particularly those involving transitions between tree-and grassdominated covers, often modify evaporative water losses as a result of plant-mediated shifts in moisture access and demand. Massive afforestation of native grasslands, particularly important in the Southern Hemisphere, may have strong yet poorly quantified effects on the hydrological cycle. We explored water use patterns in Eucalyptus grandis plantations and the native humid grasslands that they replace in Central Argentina. In order to uncover the interactive effects that land cover type, soil texture and climate variability may have on evaporative water losses and water use efficiency, we estimated daily evapotranspiration (ET) in 117 tree plantations and grasslands plots across a soil textural gradient (clay-textured Vertisols to sandy-textured Entisols) using radiometric information from seven Landsat scenes, existing timber productions records, and 13 C measurements in tree stems. Tree plantations had cooler surface temperatures (À5 1C on average) and evaporated more water ( 1 80% on average) than grasslands at all times and across all sites. Absolute ET differences between grasslands and plantations ranged from $ 0.6 to 2 mm day À1 and annual up-scaling suggested values of $ 630 and $ 1150 mm yr À1 for each vegetation type, respectively. The temporal variability of ET was significantly lower in plantations compared with grasslands (coefficient of variation 36% vs. 49%). Daily ET increased as the water balance became more positive (accumulated balance for previous 18 days) with a saturation response in grassland vs. a continuous linear increase in plantations, suggesting lower ecophysiological limits to water loss in tree canopies compared with the native vegetation. Plantation ET was more strongly affected by soil texture than grassland ET and peaked in coarse textured sites followed by medium and fine textured sites. Timber productivity as well as 13 C concentration in stems peaked in medium textured sites, indicating lower water use efficiency on extreme textures and suggesting that water limitation was not responsible for productivity declines towards finer and coarser soils. Our study highlighted the key role that vegetation type plays on evapotranspiration and, therefore, in the hydrological cycle. Considering that tree plantations may continue their expansion over grasslands, problematic changes in water management and, perhaps, in local climate can develop from the higher evaporative water losses of tree plantations.

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[1] Vegetation change affects water fluxes and influences the direction and intensity of salt exchange between ecosystems and groundwater. In some conditions it can also lead to an intense accumulation of salts in soils and aquifers, as has been documented for the conversion of native grassland to tree plantations in the plains of Argentina, Hungary and Russia. In this paper we present a hierarchical framework to predict salt accumulation following vegetation change that is based on climatic, hydrogeological and biological factors. We evaluated this spatially explicit framework in temperate South America using a network of 32 pairs of adjacent plantation and grassland stands studied with detailed field measurements and remotely sensed imagery from MODIS. Our sites cover a broad precipitation gradient (770 to 1500 mm a À1) and are underlain by shallow water tables (<2.5 m of depth). At the regional scale, geoelectric surveying revealed that the salinization of plantation soils depended strongly on climate, occurring only where the annual water balance (mean precipitation-Penman-Monteith potential evapotranspiration) was <100 mm a À1 (p < 0.0001, n = 24). At the local scale, we observed that groundwater salinities observed under $50-year old plantations of different species were associated with their tolerance to salinity (p < 0.001, n = 10). Salinization occurred rapidly where rainfall was insufficient to meet the water requirements of tree plantations and where groundwater use compensated for this deficit, driving salt accumulating in the ecosystem. A general understanding of the vegetation-groundwater relationship will help predict and manage the negative and positive consequences of groundwater use from stand to regional levels of analysis.

In arid regions throughout the world, shallow phreatic aquifers feed natural oases of much higher productivity than would be expected solely from local rainfall. In South America, the presence of well-developed Prosopis flexuosa woodlands in the Monte Desert region east of the Andes has puzzled scientists for decades. Today these woodlands provide crucial subsistence to local populations, including descendants of the indigenous Huarpes. We explore the vulnerability and importance of phreatic groundwater for the productivity of the region, comparing the contributions of local rainfall to that of remote mountain recharge that is increasingly being diverted for irrigated agriculture before it reaches the desert. We combined deep soil coring, plant measurements, direct water-table observations, and stable-isotopic analyses (2H and 18O) of meteoric, surface, and ground waters at three study sites across the region, comparing woodland stands, bare dunes, and surrounding shrublands. The isotopic composition of phreatic groundwaters (delta2H: -137 per thousand +/- 5 per thousand) closely matched the signature of water brought to the region by the Mendoza River (-137 per thousand +/- 6 per thousand), suggestin that mountain-river infiltration rather than in situ rainfall deep drainage (-39 per thousand +/- 19 per thousand) was the dominant mechanism of recharge. Similarly, chloride mass balances determined from deep soil profiles (> 6 m) suggested very low recharge rates. Vegetation in woodland ecosystems, where significant groundwater discharge losses, likely >100 mm/yr occurred, relied on regionally derived groundwater located from 6.5 to 9.5 m underground. At these locations, daily water-table fluctuations of 10 mm, and stable-isotopic measurements of plant water, indicated groundwater uptake rates of 200-300 mm/yr. Regional scaling suggests that groundwater evapotranspiration reaches 18-42 mm/yr across the landscape, accounting for 7 17% of the Mendoza River flow regionally. Our study highlights the reliance of ecosystem productivity in natural oases on Andean snowmelt, which is increasingly being diverted to one of the largest irrigated regions of the continent. Understanding the ecohydrological coupling of mountain and desert ecosystems here and elsewhere should help managers balance production agriculture and conservation of unique woodland ecosystems and the rural communities that rely on them.

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While most landscapes respond to extreme rainfalls with increased surface water outflows, very flat and poorly drained ones have little capacity to do this and their most common responses include (i) increased water storage leading to rising water tables and floods, (ii) increased evaporative water losses, and, after reaching high levels of storage, (iii) increased liquid water outflows. The relative importance of these pathways was explored in the extensive plains of the Argentine Pampas, where two significant flood episodes (denoted FE1 and FE2) occurred in 2000-2003 and 2012-2013. In two of the most flood-prone areas (Western and Lower Pampa, 60,000 km 2 each), surface water cover reached 31 and 19% during FE1 in each subregion, while FE2 covered up to 22 and 10%, respectively. From the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the flood events, we distinguished slow floods lasting several years when the water table is brought to the surface following sustained precipitation excesses in groundwater-connected systems (Western Pampa), and ''fast'' floods triggered by surface water accumulation over the course of weeks to months, typical of poor surface-groundwater connectivity (Lower Pampa) or when exceptionally strong rainfalls overwhelm infiltration capacity. Because of these different hydrological responses, precipitation and evapotranspiration were strongly linked in the Lower Pampa only, while the connection between water fluxes and storage was limited to the Western Pampa. In both regions, evapotranspirative losses were strongly linked to flooded conditions as a regulatory feedback, while liquid water outflows remained negligible.