Recent leveling off of vegetation greenness and primary production reveals the increasing soil water limitations on the greening Earth

Feng, Xiaoming; Fu, Bojie; Zhang, Yuan; Pan, Naiqing; Zeng, Zhenzhong; Tian, Hanqin; Lyu, Yihe; Chen, Yongzhe; Ciais, Philippe; Wang, Ying‐Ping; Zhang, Lu; Cheng, Lei; Maestre, Fernando T.; Fernández‐Martínez, Marcos; Sardans, Jordi; Peñuelas, Josep

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2021.02.023

Cited by 56 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…More seriously, the increase in vegetation cover may stagnate because the region has reached the vegetation capacity threshold (Feng et al., 2016). Widely speaking, the increase of E weakens the amount of available water in most places around the world, also causing severe drought issues and threatening vegetation growth (Cui et al., 2021; Douville et al., 2021; Feng et al., 2021). In addition, an inverse trend in Ea and Et occurred in the semiarid and semihumid areas (a strip extending from southwestern to northeastern China).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The vegetated area of around one third of the globe—including places both with and without ecological restoration projects—has been turning greener, and the annual rate of increase in leaf area index ( LAI ) was 0.23% from 2000 to 2017 (Chen et al., 2019; Feng et al., 2021; Piao et al., 2020). Quite a few researchers have investigated the major driving factors of this increase in global vegetation greenness, which is usually attributed to land use management (Chen et al., 2019), climate change (Asoka et al., 2021), and CO 2 fertilization (Y. Yang et al., 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Vegetation Changes and Multiple Environmental Factors on Evapotranspiration Across China Over the Past 34 Years

Zheng

Miao

et al. 2022

Earth's Future

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Documenting the spatiotemporal changes in vegetation cover and hydrological cycle of the Earth system and understanding how they interact are important especially under climate warming. In this research, we quantified the changes in vegetation and evapotranspiration (E) across China during 1982–2015 and then revealed the complex relationships in climate–vegetation–evapotranspiration system. Results show that the upward trend in vegetation leaf area index (LAI) during 2000–2015 (an increase of 0.95% per year) was almost 8 times the trend during 1982–1999. The zones of the Loess Plateau and the Three‐North Shelter Forest Program are the most notable areas for LAI increases between these two periods, with increases of 11.65% and 2.87%, respectively. Increased LAI, along with the warming climate, has accelerated E across China in the past several decades, and the annual increase in the E rate was 0.34% (1.34 mm year−1) during 1982–1999 and 0.40% (1.62 mm year−1) during 2000–2015. The zones of the Loess Plateau and the karst landform are the most notable areas for transpiration increases, with individual increases of 10% and 5%, respectively. In general, the dominant causes for evaporation changes across all of China are temperature and precipitation, while the main reasons for transpiration changes include temperature, LAI, and sunshine duration. This study improves our understanding of the relationships within the climate–vegetation–evapotranspiration system and provides important support for future ecological policies across China.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Vegetation Changes and Multiple Environmental Factors on Evapotranspiration Across China Over the Past 34 Years

Zheng

Miao

et al. 2022

Earth's Future

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“…A machine learning technique is adopted for estimating the FLUXCOM Gross Primary Production (GPP) and the Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE). Previous research shows that estimates of seasonal NEE from FLUXCOM provide useful information and are widely used as the validation dataset [44][45][46][47][48]. FLUX-COM is chosen here for its wide availability throughout the CONUS domain during the time span of the experiment and its quality [49,50].…”

Section: Validation Datasetmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Joint Assimilation of Remotely Sensed Leaf Area Index and Surface Soil Moisture into a Land Surface Model

et al. 2022

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This work tests the hypothesis that jointly assimilating satellite observations of leaf area index and surface soil moisture into a land surface model improves the estimation of land vegetation and water variables. An Ensemble Kalman Filter is used to test this hypothesis across the Contiguous United States from April 2015 to December 2018. The performance of the proposed methodology is assessed for several modeled vegetation and water variables (evapotranspiration, net ecosystem exchange, and soil moisture) in terms of random errors and anomaly correlation coefficients against a set of independent validation datasets (i.e., Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model, FLUXCOM, and International Soil Moisture Network). The results show that the assimilation of the leaf area index mostly improves the estimation of evapotranspiration and net ecosystem exchange, whereas the assimilation of surface soil moisture alone improves surface soil moisture content, especially in the western US, in terms of both root mean squared error and anomaly correlation coefficient. The joint assimilation of vegetation and soil moisture information combines the results of individual vegetation and soil moisture assimilations and reduces errors (and increases correlations with the reference datasets) in evapotranspiration, net ecosystem exchange, and surface soil moisture simulated by the land surface model. However, because soil moisture satellite observations only provide information on the water content in the top 5 cm of the soil column, the impact of the proposed data assimilation technique on root zone soil moisture is limited. This work moves one step forward in the direction of improving our estimation and understanding of land surface interactions using a multivariate data assimilation approach, which can be particularly useful in regions of the world where ground observations are sparse or missing altogether.

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“…5c). However, as the latest round of afforestation efforts is about to conclude, implementation of afforestation projects will likely soon slow down in China, and combined with potential limitations from future water stress (Feng et al, 2021), the current greening trend may not continue or even slow down in the UHRB in the future.…”

Section: Reduced Water Yield and Drought Amplification From Greeningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vegetation greening weakened the capacity of water supply to China's South-to-North Water Diversion Project

Zhang

Sun

et al. 2021

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Recent climate change and vegetation greening have important implications for global terrestrial hydrological cycles and other ecosystem functions, raising concerns about the watershed water supply capacity for large water diversion projects. To address this emerging concern, we built a hybrid model based on the Coupled Carbon and Water (CCW) and Water Supply Stress Index (WaSSI) models and conducted a case study on the upper Han River basin (UHRB) in Central China that serves as the water source area to the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP). Significant vegetation greening occurred in the UHRB during 2001–2018, largely driven by the widespread afforestation in the region, with the normalized difference vegetation index increasing at a rate of 0.5±0.1 % yr−1 (p<0.05) but with no significant trends in climate during the same period (albeit with large interannual variability). Annual water yield greatly decreased, and vegetation greening alone induced a significant decrease in water yield of 3.2±1.0 mm yr−1 (p<0.05). Vegetation greening could potentially reduce the annual water supply by 7.3 km3 on average, accounting for 77 % of the intended annual water diversion volume of the SNWDP. Although vegetation greening can bring enormous ecosystem goods and services (e.g., carbon sequestration and water quality improvement), it could aggravate the severity of hydrological drought. Our analysis indicated that vegetation greening in the UHRB reduced about a quarter of water yield on average during drought periods. Given the future warming and drying climate is likely to continue to raise evaporative demand and exert stress on water availability, the potential water yield decline induced by vegetation greening revealed by our study needs to be taken into account in the water resources management over the UHRB while reaping other benefits of forest protection and ecological restoration.

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Recent leveling off of vegetation greenness and primary production reveals the increasing soil water limitations on the greening Earth

Cited by 56 publications

References 51 publications

Effects of Vegetation Changes and Multiple Environmental Factors on Evapotranspiration Across China Over the Past 34 Years

Effects of Vegetation Changes and Multiple Environmental Factors on Evapotranspiration Across China Over the Past 34 Years

The Joint Assimilation of Remotely Sensed Leaf Area Index and Surface Soil Moisture into a Land Surface Model

Vegetation greening weakened the capacity of water supply to China's South-to-North Water Diversion Project

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