Wang Linhua, an assistant researcher at the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, took the South Asian thermal forest ecosystem of the National Field Scientific Observation and Research Station of Dinghushan Forest Ecosystem in Guangdong Province (hereinafter referred to as Dinghushan Station) as the research object, and revealed the response of forest canopy flux to regional hydrothermal seasonal quantitative variation. Recently, the results were published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.
Wang Linhua, the first author of the paper, said that hydrothermal is the basic environmental variable that affects and regulates the biological and abiotic processes of forest ecosystems, and the forest canopy flux, which is an important material exchange between the atmosphere and the biosphere, is no exception, and is affected and regulated by regional hydrothermal conditions. Global change drives the divergence or asynchronous of regional hydrothermal seasonal quantities, and it is necessary to clarify how forest canopy fluxes respond to such divergence or asynchronous hydrothermal seasonal quantities.
Characteristics of monthly carbon-water flux changes in subtropical forest ecosystems at Dinghushan Station from 2003 to 2014. Courtesy of the research team
Based on the data of 12 years (2003-2014) of forest canopy flux observation, the researchers clarified the seasonal quantitative variation trend of regional water and heat and other related environmental variables, analyzed the response of carbon flux components and evapotranspiration to changes in water and heat and other related environmental variables in the forest canopy, and quantified the differences in the response of total ecosystem productivity and ecosystem respiration to changes in various environmental variables. It is found that the sensitivity of total ecosystem productivity and ecosystem respiration to hydrothermal factors determines the seasonal and annual changes in net productivity of ecosystems.
Yan Junhua, corresponding author of the paper and a researcher at the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the results of this study show that the response degree and non-synchronous response of forest canopy flux to changes in water and thermal availability determine its seasonal change pattern, which is of great significance for assessing and predicting the response of forest ecosystem processes to climate change. (Source: Zhu Hanbin, China Science News)
Related Paper Information:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109760
