Global rooting zone water storage capacity and rooting depth estimates

Global rooting zone water storage capacity (SCWDX80, mm) and rooting depth (zCWDX80, mm) estimates from Stocker et al., (2023). 

Additional global maps for rooting zone water storage capacity and rooting depth are provided and may be used as vegetation model forcing. These are created using the code from whc_forcing_map.Rmd , available here (Zenodo entry: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7429129). The following steps were taken for creating these maps:

The relationship between vegetation height and rooting depth was fitted using quantile regression (lower 10%) and data from Tumber-Davila et al. (2023). This yields a lower-bound rooting depth.

A global map of vegetation height (Simard et al., 2011) was used for predicting the lower-bound rooting depth distribution globally.

The lower-bound rooting depth was converted into a lower-bound root zone water storage capacity following methods as described in Stocker et al. (2023).

The maximum of the lower-bound rooting depth and the inferred rooting depth (zCWDX80) from Stocker et al., (2023) was determined for each grid cell. This is what's in the file zroot_cwdx80_forcing.nc. Anaologusly for cwdx80_forcing.nc.

Please cite published paper:

Stocker, B. D., Tumber-Dávila, S. J., Konings, A. G., Anderson, M. C., Hain, C., and Jackson, R. B.: Global patterns of water storage in the rooting zones of vegetation, Nat. Geosci., 1–7, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01125-2, 2023.