Contrasting shrub and grass hydraulic responses to experimental drought.

Whole-plant hydraulics provide important information about responses to water limitation and can be used to understand how plant communities may change in a drier climate when measured on multiple species. Here, we measured above- and belowground hydraulic traits in Cornus drummondii, an encroaching shrub within North American tallgrass prairies, and Andropogon gerardii, a dominant C4 grass, to assess the potential hydraulic responses to future drought as this region undergoes woody expansion. Shelters that reduced precipitation by 50% and 0% were built over shrubs and grasses growing in sites that are burned at 1-year and 4-year frequencies. We then measured aboveground (Kshoot), belowground (Kroot), and whole-plant maximum hydraulic conductance (Kplant) in C. drummondii and Kroot in A. gerardii. We also measured vulnerability to embolism (P50) in C. drummondii stems. Overall, we show that: (1) A. gerardii had substantially greater Kroot than C. drummondii; (2) belowground hydraulic functioning was linked with aboveground processes; (3) above- and belowground C. drummondii hydraulics were not negatively impacted by the rainfall reductions imposed here. These results suggest that a multi-year drought will not ameliorate rates of woody expansion and highlight key differences in aboveground and belowground hydraulics for dominant species within the same ecosystem.

Trajectories and state changes of a grassland stream and riparian zone after a decade of woody vegetation removal.

Riparian zones and the streams they border provide vital habitat for organisms, water quality protection, and other important ecosystem services. These areas are under pressure from local (land use/land cover change) to global (climate change) processes. Woody vegetation is expanding in grassland riparian zones worldwide. Here we report on a decade-long watershed-scale mechanical removal of woody riparian vegetation along 4.5 km of stream channel in a before-after control impact experiment. Prior to this removal, woody plants had expanded into grassy riparian areas, associated with a decline in streamflow, loss of grassy plant species, and other ecosystem-scale impacts. We confirmed some expected responses, including rapid increases in stream nutrients and sediments, disappearance of stream mosses, and decreased organic inputs to streams via riparian leaves. We were surprised that nutrient and sediment increases were transient for 3 years, that there was no recovery of stream discharge, and that areas with woody removal did not shift back to a grassland state, even when reseeded with grassland species. Rapid expansion of shrubs (Cornus drummondii, Prunus americana) in the areas where trees were removed allowed woody vegetation to remain dominant despite repeating the cutting every 2 years. Our results suggest woody expansion can fundamentally alter terrestrial and aquatic habitat connections in grasslands, resulting in inexorable movement toward a new ecosystem state. Human pressures, such as climate change, atmospheric CO2 increases, and elevated atmospheric nitrogen deposition, could continue to push the ecosystem along a trajectory that is difficult to change. Our results suggest that predicting relationships between riparian zones and the streams they border could be difficult in the face of global change in all biomes, even in well-studied sites.

Changes in tree drought sensitivity provided early warning signals to the California drought and forest mortality event.

Climate warming in recent decades has negatively impacted forest health in the western United States. Here, we report on potential early warning signals (EWS) for drought-related mortality derived from measurements of tree-ring growth (ring width index; RWI) and carbon isotope discrimination (∆13 C), primarily focused on ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). Sampling was conducted in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, near the epicenter of drought severity and mortality associated with the 2012-2015 California drought and concurrent outbreak of western pine beetle (Dendroctonus brevicomis). At this site, we found that widespread mortality was presaged by five decades of increasing sensitivity (i.e., increased explained variation) of both tree growth and ∆13 C to Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). We hypothesized that increasing sensitivity of tree growth and ∆13 C to hydroclimate constitute EWS that indicate an increased likelihood of widespread forest mortality caused by direct and indirect effects of drought. We then tested these EWS in additional ponderosa pine-dominated forests that experienced varying mortality rates associated with the same California drought event. In general, drier sites showed increasing sensitivity of RWI to PDSI over the last century, as well as higher mortality following the California drought event compared to wetter sites. Two sites displayed evidence that thinning or fire events that reduced stand basal area effectively reversed the trend of increasing hydroclimate sensitivity. These comparisons indicate that reducing competition for soil water and/or decreasing bark beetle host tree density via forest management-particularly in drier regions-may buffer these forests against drought stress and associated mortality risk. EWS such as these could provide land managers more time to mitigate the extent or severity of forest mortality in advance of droughts. Substantial efforts at deploying additional dendrochronological research in concert with remote sensing and forest modeling will aid in forecasting of forest responses to continued climate warming.

Historical changes in the stomatal limitation of photosynthesis: empirical support for an optimality principle.

The ratio of leaf internal (ci ) to ambient (ca ) partial pressure of CO2 , defined here as χ, is an index of adjustments in both leaf stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate to environmental conditions. Measurements and proxies of this ratio can be used to constrain vegetation model uncertainties for predicting terrestrial carbon uptake and water use. We test a theory based on the least-cost optimality hypothesis for modelling historical changes in χ over the 1951-2014 period, across different tree species and environmental conditions, as reconstructed from stable carbon isotopic measurements across a global network of 103 absolutely dated tree-ring chronologies. The theory predicts optimal χ as a function of air temperature, vapour pressure deficit, ca and atmospheric pressure. The theoretical model predicts 39% of the variance in χ values across sites and years, but underestimates the intersite variability in the reconstructed χ trends, resulting in only 8% of the variance in χ trends across years explained by the model. Overall, our results support theoretical predictions that variations in χ are tightly regulated by the four environmental drivers. They also suggest that explicitly accounting for the effects of plant-available soil water and other site-specific characteristics might improve the predictions.

Stronger influence of growth rate than severity of drought stress on mortality of large ponderosa pines during the 2012-2015 California drought.

Forests in the western United States are being subject to more frequent and severe drought events as the climate warms. The 2012-2015 California drought is a recent example, whereby drought stress was exacerbated by a landscape-scale outbreak of western pine beetle (Dendroctonus brevicomis) and resulted in widespread mortality of dominant canopy species including ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). In this study, we compared pairs of large surviving and beetle-killed ponderosa pines following the California drought in the southern Sierra Nevadas to evaluate physiological characteristics related to survival. Inter-annual growth rates and tree-ring stable isotopes (∆13C and δ18O) were utilized to compare severity of drought stress and climate sensitivity in ponderosa pines that survived and those that were killed by western pine beetle. Compared to beetle-killed trees, surviving trees had higher growth rates and grew in plots with lower ponderosa pine basal area. However, there were no detectable differences in tree-ring ∆13C, δ18O, or stable isotope sensitivity to drought-related meteorological variables. These results indicate that differences in severity of drought stress had little influence on local, inter-tree differences in growth rate and survival of large ponderosa pines during this drought event. Many previous studies have shown that large trees are more likely to be attacked and killed by bark beetles compared to small trees. Our results further suggest that among large ponderosa pines, those that were more resistant to drought stress and bark beetle attacks were in the upper echelon of growth rates among trees within a stand and across the landscape.

Intra-canopy leaf trait variation facilitates high leaf area index and compensatory growth in a clonal woody encroaching shrub.

Leaf trait variation enables plants to utilize large gradients of light availability that exist across canopies of high leaf area index (LAI), allowing for greater net carbon gain while reducing light availability for understory competitors. While these canopy dynamics are well understood in forest ecosystems, studies of canopy structure of woody shrubs in grasslands are lacking. To evaluate the investment strategy used by these shrubs, we investigated the vertical distribution of leaf traits and physiology across canopies of Cornus drummondii, the predominant woody encroaching shrub in the Kansas tallgrass prairie. We also examined the impact of disturbance by browsing and grazing on these factors. Our results reveal that leaf mass per area (LMA) and leaf nitrogen per area (Na) varied approximately threefold across canopies of C. drummondii, resulting in major differences in the physiological functioning of leaves. High LMA leaves had high photosynthetic capacity, while low LMA leaves had a novel strategy for maintaining light compensation points below ambient light levels. The vertical allocation of leaf traits in C. drummondii canopies was also modified in response to browsing, which increased light availability at deeper canopy depths. As a result, LMA and Na increased at lower canopy depths, leading to a greater photosynthetic capacity deeper in browsed canopies compared to control canopies. This response, along with increased light availability, facilitated greater photosynthesis and resource-use efficiency deeper in browsed canopies compared to control canopies. Our results illustrate how C. drummondii facilitates high LAI canopies and a compensatory growth response to browsing-both of which are key factors contributing to the success of C. drummondii and other species responsible for grassland woody encroachment.