Responses of global terrestrial ecosystems to water stress

This study investigated the changes in the sensitivity of ecosystem productivity (i.e., GPP) to water stress after disturbances (drought and fire) at a global scale and further quantified the time needed for the sensitivity to recover. We used an ensemble of long-term remote sensing based GPP products and regressed GPP against drought indices, such as PDSI and SPEI. We estimated the sensitivity of GPP to water stress and compared the sensitivity before and after disturbances. Our results exhibited divergent changes in sensitivity among different regions across the globe, where dry regions, such as Australia and western North America, showed increased sensitivity, while wet regions, such as tropical forests, had decreased sensitivity.<br>Citation: Meng Liu, Josep Peñuelas, Anna T. Trugman, German Vargas G., Linqing Yang, William R. L. Anderegg. Diverging responses of terrestrial ecosystems to water stress after disturbances. 2024. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02191-z (In press)