Publication Date:
2016-10-05
Description:
Much of the western US is projected to become warmer and drier over the coming century, underscoring the need to understand how climate influences terrestrial ecosystems in this region. We quantified the response of tree net primary productivity (NPP), live biomass (BIO), and mean carbon residence time (CRT = BIO/NPP) to spatial variation in climatic water availability in the western US. We used forest inventory measurements from 1,953 mature stands (≥ 100 years) in Washington, Oregon, and California (WAORCA) along with satellite and climate data sets covering the western US. We summarized forest structure and function in both domains along a 400 cm yr−1 hydrologic gradient, quantified with a climate moisture index based on the difference between precipitation and reference evapotranspiration summed from October-September (i.e., water-year) and then averaged annually from 1985–2014 (CMIwy). Median NPP, BIO, and CRT computed at 10 cm yr−1 intervals along the CMIwy gradient increased monotonically with increasing CMIwy across both WAORCA (rs = 0.93–0.96, p
Print ISSN:
1810-6277
Electronic ISSN:
1810-6285
Topics:
Biology
,
Geosciences
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