TY - JOUR
T1 - Predicting vegetation type through physiological and environmental interactions with leaf traits
T2 - evergreen and deciduous forests in an earth system modeling framework
AU - Weng, Ensheng
AU - Farrior, Caroline E.
AU - Dybzinski, Ray
AU - Pacala, Stephen Wilson
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding was provided by USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station (Agreement 13-JV-11242315-066) and Princeton Environment Institute. We thank Dr. Sergey Malyshev for his help in preparing forcing data and Dr. Cleo Chou for her helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We thank Prof. I. Colin Prentice and other three reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions, which greatly improved this manuscript. This work was conducted while CEF was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, sponsored by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
PY - 2017/6
Y1 - 2017/6
N2 - Earth system models are incorporating plant trait diversity into their land components to better predict vegetation dynamics in a changing climate. However, extant plant trait distributions will not allow extrapolations to novel community assemblages in future climates, which will require a mechanistic understanding of the trade-offs that determine trait diversity. In this study, we show how physiological trade-offs involving leaf mass per unit area (LMA), leaf lifespan, leaf nitrogen, and leaf respiration may explain the distribution patterns of evergreen and deciduous trees in the temperate and boreal zones based on (1) an evolutionary analysis of a simple mathematical model and (2) simulation experiments of an individual-based dynamic vegetation model (i.e., LM3-PPA). The evolutionary analysis shows that these leaf traits set up a trade-off between carbon- and nitrogen-use efficiency at the scale of individual trees and therefore determine competitively dominant leaf strategies. As soil nitrogen availability increases, the dominant leaf strategy switches from one that is high in nitrogen-use efficiency to one that is high in carbon-use efficiency or, equivalently, from high-LMA/long-lived leaves (i.e., evergreen) to low-LMA/short-lived leaves (i.e., deciduous). In a region of intermediate soil nitrogen availability, the dominant leaf strategy may be either deciduous or evergreen depending on the initial conditions of plant trait abundance (i.e., founder controlled) due to feedbacks of leaf traits on soil nitrogen mineralization through litter quality. Simulated successional patterns by LM3-PPA from the leaf physiological trade-offs are consistent with observed successional dynamics of evergreen and deciduous forests at three sites spanning the temperate to boreal zones.
AB - Earth system models are incorporating plant trait diversity into their land components to better predict vegetation dynamics in a changing climate. However, extant plant trait distributions will not allow extrapolations to novel community assemblages in future climates, which will require a mechanistic understanding of the trade-offs that determine trait diversity. In this study, we show how physiological trade-offs involving leaf mass per unit area (LMA), leaf lifespan, leaf nitrogen, and leaf respiration may explain the distribution patterns of evergreen and deciduous trees in the temperate and boreal zones based on (1) an evolutionary analysis of a simple mathematical model and (2) simulation experiments of an individual-based dynamic vegetation model (i.e., LM3-PPA). The evolutionary analysis shows that these leaf traits set up a trade-off between carbon- and nitrogen-use efficiency at the scale of individual trees and therefore determine competitively dominant leaf strategies. As soil nitrogen availability increases, the dominant leaf strategy switches from one that is high in nitrogen-use efficiency to one that is high in carbon-use efficiency or, equivalently, from high-LMA/long-lived leaves (i.e., evergreen) to low-LMA/short-lived leaves (i.e., deciduous). In a region of intermediate soil nitrogen availability, the dominant leaf strategy may be either deciduous or evergreen depending on the initial conditions of plant trait abundance (i.e., founder controlled) due to feedbacks of leaf traits on soil nitrogen mineralization through litter quality. Simulated successional patterns by LM3-PPA from the leaf physiological trade-offs are consistent with observed successional dynamics of evergreen and deciduous forests at three sites spanning the temperate to boreal zones.
KW - LM3-PPA
KW - dynamic global vegetation model
KW - evolutionarily stable strategy
KW - forest succession
KW - game theory
KW - leaf traits
KW - nitrogen cycle
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U2 - 10.1111/gcb.13542
DO - 10.1111/gcb.13542
M3 - Article
C2 - 27782353
AN - SCOPUS:85003781961
VL - 23
SP - 2482
EP - 2498
JO - Global Change Biology
JF - Global Change Biology
SN - 1354-1013
IS - 6
ER -