Tree-cover and Height Diversity Buffer Plant Growth Sensitivity to Hydroclimatic Variability

Understanding how canopy structure influences the interactions between climatic water availability and vegetation greenness across diverse aridity levels is crucial to understand how plants respond to increasing hydroclimatic extremes. We employed the Peter-Clark Moment Conditional Independence (PCMCI) algorithm to quantify bidirectional causal effects between hydroclimatic variables (soil moisture, SM; vapor pressure deficit, VPD) and vegetation greenness (leaf area index, LAI; enhanced vegetation index, EVI). We analyzed these effects across tree-cover fraction, aridity gradients and canopy height diversity.