Perennial plant mortality in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts in response to severe, multi-year drought

McAuliffe, Joseph R.; Hamerlynck, Erik P.

doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2010.01.001

Cited by 89 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…In Ambrosia dumosa (Asteraceae), Eriogonum fasciculatum (Polygonaceae), Simmondsia chinensis (Simmondsiaceae) and Tetracoccus hallii (Picrodendraceae), individuals weakened by an earlier drought, as judged from their growth rates, were more likely to die during a later one. Likewise, a regional study showed L. tridentata to have much higher survival at most locations than smaller drought-deciduous species and provided evidence for cumulative effects of multiple drought years [48].…”

Section: Precipitation Global Environmental Change and Desert Plant mentioning

confidence: 95%

A demographic approach to study effects of climate change in desert plants

Salguero‐Gómez

Siewert

Casper

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

113

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Desert species respond strongly to infrequent, intense pulses of precipitation. Consequently, indigenous flora has developed a rich repertoire of life-history strategies to deal with fluctuations in resource availability. Examinations of how future climate change will affect the biota often forecast negative impacts, but these-usually correlative-approaches overlook precipitation variation because they are based on averages. Here, we provide an overview of how variable precipitation affects perennial and annual desert plants, and then implement an innovative, mechanistic approach to examine the effects of precipitation on populations of two desert plant species. This approach couples robust climatic projections, including variable precipitation, with stochastic, stage-structured models constructed from long-term demographic datasets of the short-lived Cryptantha flava in the Colorado Plateau Desert (USA) and the annual Carrichtera annua in the Negev Desert (Israel). Our results highlight these populations' potential to buffer future stochastic precipitation. Population growth rates in both species increased under future conditions: wetter, longer growing seasons for Cryptantha and drier years for Carrichtera. We determined that such changes are primarily due to survival and size changes for Cryptantha and the role of seed bank for Carrichtera. Our work suggests that desert plants, and thus the resources they provide, might be more resilient to climate change than previously thought.

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Section: Precipitation Global Environmental Change and Desert Plant mentioning

confidence: 95%

A demographic approach to study effects of climate change in desert plants

Salguero‐Gómez

Siewert

Casper

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

113

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“…In addition, increased CO 2 may favor propagation of invasive annual plants (Smith et al, 2000). Dry conditions in the winter-spring will increase perennial plant mortality (McAuliffe and Hamerlynck, 2010) and may suppress germination of annuals, which would enhance dust emission. Also, dust flux at relatively high altitude sites is more strongly dependent on PDI (Tables 5 and 7); thus, higher temperature and reduced PDI may significantly increase dust emissions from such areas.…”

Section: Predicting Dust Flux In the Southwestern Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional and climatic controls on seasonal dust deposition in the southwestern U.S.

Reheis

Urban

2011

Aeolian Research

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a b s t r a c tVertical dust deposition rates (dust flux) are a complex response to the interaction of seasonal precipitation, wind, changes in plant cover and land use, dust source type, and local vs. distant dust emission in the southwestern U.S. Seasonal dust flux in the Mojave-southern Great Basin (MSGB) deserts, measured from 1999 to 2008, is similar in summer-fall and winter-spring, and antecedent precipitation tends to suppress dust flux in winter-spring. In contrast, dust flux in the eastern Colorado Plateau (ECP) region is much larger in summer-fall than in winter-spring, and twice as large as in the MSGB. ECP dust is related to wind speed, and in the winter-spring to antecedent moisture. Higher summer dust flux in the ECP is likely due to gustier winds and runoff during monsoonal storms when temperature is also higher. Source types in the MSGB and land use in the ECP have important effects on seasonal dust flux. In the MSGB, wet playas produce salt-rich dust during wetter seasons, whereas antecedent and current moisture suppress dust emission from alluvial and dry-playa sources during winter-spring. In the ECP under drought conditions, dust flux at a grazed-and-plowed site increased greatly, and also increased at three annualized, previously grazed sites. Dust fluxes remained relatively consistent at ungrazed and currently grazed sites that have maintained perennial vegetation cover. Under predicted scenarios of future climate change, these results suggest that an increase in summer storms may increase dust flux in both areas, but resultant effects will depend on source type, land use, and vegetation cover.Published by Elsevier B.V.

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“…The quantification of drought impacts is commonly done by using the so-called drought indices, which are proxies based on climatic information and assumed to adequately quantify the degree of drought hazard exerted on sensitive systems. Many studies have shown strong relationships between the temporal variability of different drought indices and response variables of natural systems such as tree growth (e.g., Orwig and Abrams, 1997;Copenheaver et al, 2011;Pasho et al, 2011), river discharge (e.g., Vicente-Serrano and López-Moreno, 2005;Hannaford et al, 2011), groundwater level (Khan et al, 2008;Fiorillo and Guadagno, 2010), crop yields (e.g., Vicente-Serrano et al, 2006;Vergni and Todisco, 2011), vegetation activity (e.g., Lotsch et al, 2003;McAuliffe and Hamerlynck, 2010;Vicente-Serrano, 2007), the frequency of forest fires (Littell et al, 2009;Drobyshev et al, 2012), etc. Drought indices are currently used to monitor drought conditions in real time manner that is easily understood by end users (Svoboda et al, 2002;Shukla et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance of Drought Indices for Ecological, Agricultural, and Hydrological Applications

et al. 2012

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Abstract:In this study we provide a global assessment of the performance of different drought indices for monitoring drought impacts on several hydrological, agricultural and ecological response variables. For this purpose, we compare the performance of several drought indices (the Standardized Precipitation Index, SPI; four versions of the Palmer Drought Severity Index, PDSI; and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, SPEI) to predict changes in streamflow, soil moisture, forest growth and crop yield. We found a superior capability of the SPEI and the SPI drought indices, which are calculated on different time-scales, than the Palmer indices to capture the drought impacts on the aforementioned hydrological, agricultural and ecological variables. We detected small differences in the comparative performance of the SPI and the SPEI indices, but the SPEI was the drought index that best captured the responses of the assessed variables to drought in summer, the season in which more drought-related impacts are recorded and in which drought monitoring is critical. Hence, the SPEI index shows improved capability to identify drought impacts as compared with the SPI one. In conclusion, it seems reasonable to recommend the use of the SPEI if the responses of the variables of interest to drought are not known a priori.

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Perennial plant mortality in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts in response to severe, multi-year drought

Cited by 89 publications

References 21 publications

A demographic approach to study effects of climate change in desert plants

A demographic approach to study effects of climate change in desert plants

Regional and climatic controls on seasonal dust deposition in the southwestern U.S.

Performance of Drought Indices for Ecological, Agricultural, and Hydrological Applications

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