Air Temperature Optima of Vegetation Productivity Across Global Biomes

Overview

Journal Nat Ecol Evol

Publisher Springer Nature

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Mar 13

PMID 30858592

Citations 54

Authors

Mengtian Huang

Shilong Piao

Philippe Ciais

Josep Penuelas

Xuhui Wang

Trevor F Keenan

Shushi Peng

Joseph A Berry

Kai Wang

Jiafu Mao

Ramdane Alkama

Alessandro Cescatti

Matthias Cuntz

Hannes De Deurwaerder

Mengdi Gao

Yue He

Yongwen Liu

Yiqi Luo

Ranga B Myneni

Shuli Niu

Xiaoying Shi

Wenping Yuan

Hans Verbeeck

Tao Wang

Jin Wu

Ivan A Janssens

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The global distribution of the optimum air temperature for ecosystem-level gross primary productivity ([Formula: see text]) is poorly understood, despite its importance for ecosystem carbon uptake under future warming. We provide empirical evidence for the existence of such an optimum, using measurements of in situ eddy covariance and satellite-derived proxies, and report its global distribution. [Formula: see text] is consistently lower than the physiological optimum temperature of leaf-level photosynthetic capacity, which typically exceeds 30 °C. The global average [Formula: see text] is estimated to be 23 ± 6 °C, with warmer regions having higher [Formula: see text] values than colder regions. In tropical forests in particular, [Formula: see text] is close to growing-season air temperature and is projected to fall below it under all scenarios of future climate, suggesting a limited safe operating space for these ecosystems under future warming.

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