Toward accounting for ecoclimate teleconnections: intra- and inter-continental consequences of altered energy balance after vegetation change

Stark, Scott C.; Breshears, David D.; García, Eva de; Law, Darin J.; Minor, D.; Saleska, S. R.; Swann, Abigail L. S.; Villegas, Juan Camilo; Aragão, Luiz E. O. C.; Bella, Elizabeth M.; Borma, Laura S.; Cobb, Neil S.; Litvak, M. E.; Magnusson, William E.; Morton, John M.; Redmond, Miranda D.

doi:10.1007/s10980-015-0282-5

Cited by 58 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…The resultant local changes in microclimate can have broader-scale impacts on climate and vegetation elsewhere via “ecoclimate teleconnections” [12,13]. Assessing ecoclimate teleconnections requires explicit consideration of vegetation-climate feedbacks through five steps ([14]; Fig 1A): “(1) How does the land surface change in terms of vegetation structure? ; (2) How does the vegetation-structure change influence albedo and other components of land surface energy balance?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(a) Ecoclimate teleconnections propagate land-atmosphere energy disturbances from the local region of disturbance to remote regions potentially having ecological consequences (taken from [14]). (b) In our experiments, forest is converted to grass in three scenarios to illustrate the ecoclimate teleconnections: (1) western North America (wNA) only; (2) the Amazon basin only; and (3) both wNA and the Amazon simultaneously (wNA+Amazon).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mid-latitude forest loss or gain can shift tropical precipitation bands [12,18,26]. Most of the relevant research to date has focused on the first four steps of ecoclimate teleconnection assessment (Fig 1A), with only a few also considering resultant ecological effects on vegetation in the remote, teleconnected location [12,14]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Synergistic Ecoclimate Teleconnections from Forest Loss in Different Regions Structure Global Ecological Responses

et al. 2016

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Forest loss in hotspots around the world impacts not only local climate where loss occurs, but also influences climate and vegetation in remote parts of the globe through ecoclimate teleconnections. The magnitude and mechanism of remote impacts likely depends on the location and distribution of forest loss hotspots, but the nature of these dependencies has not been investigated. We use global climate model simulations to estimate the distribution of ecologically-relevant climate changes resulting from forest loss in two hotspot regions: western North America (wNA), which is experiencing accelerated dieoff, and the Amazon basin, which is subject to high rates of deforestation. The remote climatic and ecological net effects of simultaneous forest loss in both regions differed from the combined effects of loss from the two regions simulated separately, as evident in three impacted areas. Eastern South American Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) increased due to changes in seasonal rainfall associated with Amazon forest loss and changes in temperature related to wNA forest loss. Eurasia’s GPP declined with wNA forest loss due to cooling temperatures increasing soil ice volume. Southeastern North American productivity increased with simultaneous forest loss, but declined with only wNA forest loss due to changes in VPD. Our results illustrate the need for a new generation of local-to-global scale analyses to identify potential ecoclimate teleconnections, their underlying mechanisms, and most importantly, their synergistic interactions, to predict the responses to increasing forest loss under future land use change and climate change.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Synergistic Ecoclimate Teleconnections from Forest Loss in Different Regions Structure Global Ecological Responses

et al. 2016

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“…They found that macrostate varies both by season and by ecosystem, with evergreen forests and grasslands highly elastic to seasonal air temperature and more likely than agricultural or deciduous systems to experience state changes with climate warming. Stark et al (2015), meanwhile, propose that eco-climate ''teleconnections,'' in which ecological changes in one area influence climate and associated ecological responses in another, should be considered when predicting the impacts of deforestation, afforestation and die-off associated with climate change, land conversion, and other phenomena. They illustrated potential ecoclimate teleconnections in a simulation that assumed complete tree cover loss in western North America, with results predicting subsequent drying and reduced net primary productivity in other areas of North America and beyond.…”

Section: Macroscale Patterns and Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Macrosystems ecology: novel methods and new understanding of multi-scale patterns and processes

2015

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As the global biomes are increasingly threatened by human activities, understanding of macroscale patterns and processes is pressingly needed for effective management and policy making. Macrosystems ecology, which studies multiscale ecological patterns and processes, has gained growing interest in the research community. However, as a relatively new field in ecology, research in macrosystems ecology is facing various challenges. In this special issue, we highlight the following two latest exciting developments in this thriving field: (1) novel tools and methods and (2) new understandings on macroscale patterns and processes. While we believe that the contributions featured in this issue provide promising advancements in macrosystems ecology, we also see multiple challenges for future research including (1) multidisciplinary approaches for longterm and multiscale studies and (2) scaling local patterns and processes to broader scales.Keywords Macrosystems ecology Á Macroecology Á Macroscale Á Scaling Á Heterogeneity Macrosystems ecology, the study of ecological patterns and processes across multiple spatial and temporal scales, is a topic of growing interest. Macrosystems ecology has strong connections with landscape ecology, which also has deep emphases on spatial and temporal patterns, heterogeneity, and scale multiplicity (Forman 1995;Turner 2005;Wu 2013). Since the publication of the foundational paper by Brown and Maurer (1989), which coined the term of ''macroecology'', the field has experienced a rapid growth (Fig. 1). Macroecology is principally concerned with finding patterns in large-scale abundances and distributions and theorizing the reasons why these patterns exist (Brown 1995). It seeks generalized patterns at large spatial and temporal scales and statistical relationships that explain the distribution of biodiversity from a historical and geographical perspective

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“…Herbivory has been shown to influence the distribution and abundance of vegetation at the relatively fine spatial scales such as hillslopes [5,12]. At the same time, biomass in water-limited ecosystems (or proxies such as remotely sensed greenness) can exhibit relatively rapid temporal variability controlled, among other things, by phenology; disturbances such as fire [13], water stress, and insect infestation [14]; and atmospheric teleconnections that can produce rare but large precipitation events [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing a Multi-Platform Data Fusion Technique in Capturing Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Heterogeneous Dryland Ecosystems in Topographically Complex Terrain

et al. 2017

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Water-limited ecosystems encompass approximately 40% of terrestrial land mass and play a critical role in modulating Earth's climate and provisioning ecosystem services to humanity. Spaceborne remote sensing is a critical tool for characterizing ecohydrologic patterns and advancing the understanding of the interactions between atmospheric forcings and ecohydrologic responses. Fine to medium scale spatial and temporal resolutions are needed to capture the spatial heterogeneity and the temporally intermittent response of these ecosystems to environmental forcings. Techniques combining complementary remote sensing datasets have been developed, but the heterogeneous nature of these regions present significant challenges. Here we investigate the capacity of one such approach, the Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM) algorithm, to map Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) at 30 m spatial resolution and at a daily temporal resolution in an experimental watershed in southwest Idaho, USA. The Dry Creek Experimental Watershed captures an ecotone from a sagebrush steppe ecosystem to evergreen needle-leaf forests along an approximately 1000 m elevation gradient. We used STARFM to fuse NDVI retrievals from the MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Landsat during the course of a growing season (April to September). Specifically we input to STARFM a pair of Landsat NDVI retrievals bracketing a sequence of daily MODIS NDVI retrievals to yield daily estimates of NDVI at resolutions of 30 m. In a suite of data denial experiments we compared these STARFM predictions against corresponding Landsat NDVI retrievals and characterized errors in predicted NDVI. We investigated how errors vary as a function of vegetation functional type and topographic aspect. We find that errors in predicting NDVI were highest during green-up and senescence and lowest during the middle of the growing season. Absolute errors were generally greatest in tree-covered portions of the watershed and lowest in locations characterized by grasses/bare ground. On average, relative errors in predicted average NDVI were greatest in grass/bare ground regions, on south-facing aspects, and at the height of the growing season. We present several ramifications revealed in this study for the use of multi-sensor remote sensing data for the study of spatiotemporal ecohydrologic patterns in dryland ecosystems.

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Toward accounting for ecoclimate teleconnections: intra- and inter-continental consequences of altered energy balance after vegetation change

Cited by 58 publications

References 61 publications

Synergistic Ecoclimate Teleconnections from Forest Loss in Different Regions Structure Global Ecological Responses

Synergistic Ecoclimate Teleconnections from Forest Loss in Different Regions Structure Global Ecological Responses

Macrosystems ecology: novel methods and new understanding of multi-scale patterns and processes

Assessing a Multi-Platform Data Fusion Technique in Capturing Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Heterogeneous Dryland Ecosystems in Topographically Complex Terrain

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