Disentangling the Regional Climate Impacts of Competing Vegetation Responses to Elevated Atmospheric CO2
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: McDermid S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8409678 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Mosquitoes are of great medical significance as vectors of deadly diseases. Despite this, little is known about their evolutionary history or how their present day diversity has been shaped. Within a phylogenetic framework, here we show a strong correlation between climate change and mosquito speciation rates: the first time to our knowledge such an effect has been demonstrated for insects. Information theory reveals that although climate change is correlated with mosquito evolution there are other important factors at play. We identify one such driver to be the rise of mammals, which are predominant hosts of Culicidae. Regardless of the precise mechanism, we demonstrate a strong historical association. This finding, taken in combination with projected rises in atmospheric CO2 from anthropogenic activity, has important implications for culicid vector distributions and abundance, and consequently for human health.
| S-EPMC6218564 | biostudies-literature
Project description:One of the many ways that climate change may affect human health is by altering the nutrient content of food crops. However, previous attempts to study the effects of increased atmospheric CO2 on crop nutrition have been limited by small sample sizes and/or artificial growing conditions. Here we present data from a meta-analysis of the nutritional contents of the edible portions of 41 cultivars of six major crop species grown using free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) technology to expose crops to ambient and elevated CO2 concentrations in otherwise normal field cultivation conditions. This data, collected across three continents, represents over ten times more data on the nutrient content of crops grown in FACE experiments than was previously available. We expect it to be deeply useful to future studies, such as efforts to understand the impacts of elevated atmospheric CO2 on crop macro- and micronutrient concentrations, or attempts to alleviate harmful effects of these changes for the billions of people who depend on these crops for essential nutrients.
| S-EPMC4508823 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Environmental gradients (EG) related to climate, topography and vegetation are among the most important drivers of broad scale patterns of species richness. However, these different EG do not necessarily drive species richness in similar ways, potentially presenting synergistic associations when driving species richness. Understanding the synergism among EG allows us to address key questions arising from the effects of global climate and land use changes on biodiversity. Herein, we use variation partitioning (also know as commonality analysis) to disentangle unique and shared contributions of different EG in explaining species richness of Neotropical vertebrates. We use three broad sets of predictors to represent the environmental variability in (i) climate (annual mean temperature, temperature annual range, annual precipitation and precipitation range), (ii) topography (mean elevation, range and coefficient of variation of elevation), and (iii) vegetation (land cover diversity, standard deviation and range of forest canopy height). The shared contribution between two types of EG is used to quantify synergistic processes operating among EG, offering new perspectives on the causal relationships driving species richness. To account for spatially structured processes, we use Spatial EigenVector Mapping models. We perform analyses across groups with distinct dispersal abilities (amphibians, non-volant mammals, bats and birds) and discuss the influence of vagility on the partitioning results. Our findings indicate that broad scale patterns of vertebrate richness are mainly affected by the synergism between climate and vegetation, followed by the unique contribution of climate. Climatic factors were relatively more important in explaining species richness of good dispersers. Most of the variation in vegetation that explains vertebrate richness is climatically structured, supporting the productivity hypothesis. Further, the weak synergism between topography and vegetation urges caution when using topographic complexity as a surrogate of habitat (vegetation) heterogeneity.
| S-EPMC4807822 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Severe PM2.5 pollution threatens public health in India. Atmospheric stagnation traps emitted pollutants, worsening their health impacts. Global warming is anticipated to alter future stagnation patterns, impacting the effectiveness of air quality policies. Here, we develop a region-specific index that characterizes meteorological conditions driving stagnation and associated PM2.5 increases. Applying this index to an ensemble of climate models and global warming scenarios, we find that future stagnation changes result from both global CO2-driven circulation changes and local aerosol-driven meteorological responses. By 2100, we project an increase in winter stagnation in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) of 7 ± 3 days that leads to an increase in PM2.5 of ~7 ug/m3 in a high-warming and high-aerosol scenario. However, annual stagnation occurrences decrease across most of India. Thus, stringent air quality regulations in the IGP during winters will be critical to reduce surface PM2.5 concentrations as climate warms. Such regulations will directly improve air quality while reducing future stagnation occurrences, providing additional air quality benefits.
| S-EPMC11358298 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The global monsoon is characterised by transitions between pronounced dry and wet seasons, affecting food security for two-thirds of the world's population. Rising atmospheric CO2 influences the terrestrial hydrological cycle through climate-radiative and vegetation-physiological forcings. How these two forcings affect the seasonal intensity and characteristics of monsoonal precipitation and runoff is poorly understood. Here we use four Earth System Models to show that in a CO2-enriched climate, radiative forcing changes drive annual precipitation increases for most monsoon regions. Further, vegetation feedbacks substantially affect annual precipitation in North and South America and Australia monsoon regions. In the dry season, runoff increases over most monsoon regions, due to stomatal closure-driven evapotranspiration reductions and associated atmospheric circulation change. Our results imply that flood risks may amplify in the wet season. However, the lengthening of the monsoon rainfall season and reduced evapotranspiration will shorten the water resources scarcity period for most monsoon regions.
| S-EPMC7560717 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Throughout Earth's history, variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration modulated climate. Understanding changes in atmospheric carbon cycle is therefore pivotal in predicting consequences of recent global warming. Here, we report stable carbon isotopes (δ13C) of molecular land plant fossils complemented by bulk organic and inorganic carbon fractions for early Toarcian (Early Jurassic) sediments that coincided with global warming and a carbon cycle perturbation. The carbon cycle perturbation is expressed by a negative excursion in the δ13C records established for the different substrates. Based on differences in the magnitude of the carbon isotope excursion recorded in land plants and marine substrates we infer that the early Toarcian warming was paralleled by an increase in atmospheric CO2 levels from ~500 ppmv to ~1000 ppmv. Our data suggest that rising atmospheric CO2 levels resulted from the injection of 12C-enriched methane and its subsequent oxidation to CO2. Based on the cyclic nature of the CIE we concluded that methane was released from climate sensitive reservoirs, in particular permafrost areas. Moderate volcanic CO2 emissions led to a destabilization of the labile permafrost carbon pool triggering the onset of Toarcian climate change only. The main carbon cycle perturbation then subsequently was driven by a self-sustained demise of a carbon-rich cryosphere progressing from mid to high latitudes as reflected by latitudinal climate gradients recorded in land plant carbon isotopes.
| S-EPMC6954244 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Accurate monitoring of vegetation stress is required for better modelling and forecasting of primary production, in a world where heatwaves and droughts are expected to become increasingly prevalent. Variability in formaldehyde (HCHO) concentrations in the troposphere is dominated by local emissions of short-lived biogenic (BVOC) and pyrogenic volatile organic compounds. BVOCs are emitted by plants in a rapid protective response to abiotic stress, mediated by the energetic status of leaves (the excess of reducing power when photosynthetic light and dark reactions are decoupled, as occurs when stomata close in response to water stress). Emissions also increase exponentially with leaf temperature. New analytical methods for the detection of spatiotemporally contiguous extremes in remote-sensing data are applied here to satellite-derived atmospheric HCHO columns. BVOC emissions are shown to play a central role in the formation of the largest positive HCHO anomalies. Although vegetation stress can be captured by various remotely sensed quantities, spaceborne HCHO emerges as the most consistent recorder of vegetation responses to the largest climate extremes, especially in forested regions.
| S-EPMC9290652 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration on soil microbial communities have been previously recorded. However, limited information is available regarding the response of methanogenic communities to elevated CO2 in freshwater marshes. Using high-throughput sequencing and real-time quantitative PCR, we compared the abundance and community structure of methanogens in different compartments (bulk soil, rhizosphere soil, and roots) of Calamagrostis angustifolia and Carex lasiocarpa growing marshes under ambient (380 ppm) and elevated CO2 (700 ppm) atmospheres. C. lasiocarpa rhizosphere was a hotspot for potential methane production, based on the 10-fold higher abundance of the mcrA genes per dry weight. The two marshes and their compartments were occupied by different methanogenic communities. In the C. lasiocarpa marsh, archaeal family Methanobacteriaceae, Rice Cluster II, and Methanosaetaceae co-dominated in the bulk soil, while Methanobacteriaceae was the exclusively dominant methanogen in the rhizosphere soil and roots. Families Methanosarcinaceae and Methanocellaceae dominated in the bulk soil of C. angustifolia marsh. Conversely, Methanosarcinaceae and Methanocellaceae together with Methanobacteriaceae dominated in the rhizosphere soil and roots, respectively, in the C. angustifolia marsh. Elevated atmospheric CO2 increased plant photosynthesis and belowground biomass of C. lasiocarpa and C. angustifolia marshes. However, it did not significantly change the abundance (based on mcrA qPCR), diversity, or community structure (based on high-throughput sequencing) of methanogens in any of the compartments, irrespective of plant type. Our findings suggest that the population and species of the dominant methanogens had weak responses to elevated atmospheric CO2. However, minor changes in specific methanogenic taxa occurred under elevated atmospheric CO2. Despite minor changes, methanogenic communities in different compartments of two contrasting freshwater marshes were rather stable under elevated atmospheric CO2.
| S-EPMC5442310 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundElevated carbon dioxide concentrations (eCO2), one of the main causes of climate change, have several consequences for both vine and cover crops in vineyards and potentially also for the soil microbiome. Hence soil samples were taken from a vineyard free-air CO2 enrichment (VineyardFACE) study in Geisenheim and examined for possible changes in the soil active bacterial composition (cDNA of 16S rRNA) using a metabarcoding approach. Soil samples were taken from the areas between the rows of vines with and without cover cropping from plots exposed to either eCO2 or ambient CO2 (aCO2).ResultsDiversity indices and redundancy analysis (RDA) demonstrated that eCO2 changed the active soil bacterial diversity in grapevine soil with cover crops (p-value 0.007). In contrast, the bacterial composition in bare soil was unaffected. In addition, the microbial soil respiration (p-values 0.04-0.003) and the ammonium concentration (p-value 0.003) were significantly different in the samples where cover crops were present and exposed to eCO2. Moreover, under eCO2 conditions, qPCR results showed a significant decrease in 16S rRNA copy numbers and transcripts for enzymes involved in N2 fixation and NO2- reduction were observed using qPCR. Co-occurrence analysis revealed a shift in the number, strength, and patterns of microbial interactions under eCO2 conditions, mainly represented by a reduction in the number of interacting ASVs and the number of interactions.ConclusionsThe results of this study demonstrate that eCO2 concentrations changed the active soil bacterial composition, which could have future influence on both soil properties and wine quality.
| S-EPMC9942357 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Mesophyll conductance (gm ) is known to affect plant photosynthesis. However, gm is rarely explicitly considered in land surface models (LSMs), with the consequence that its role in ecosystem and large-scale carbon and water fluxes is poorly understood. In particular, the different magnitudes of gm across plant functional types (PFTs) are expected to cause spatially divergent vegetation responses to elevated CO2 concentrations. Here, an extensive literature compilation of gm across major vegetation types is used to parameterize an empirical model of gm in the LSM JSBACH and to adjust photosynthetic parameters based on simulated An - Ci curves. We demonstrate that an explicit representation of gm changes the response of photosynthesis to environmental factors, which cannot be entirely compensated by adjusting photosynthetic parameters. These altered responses lead to changes in the photosynthetic sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 concentrations which depend both on the magnitude of gm and the climatic conditions, particularly temperature. We then conducted simulations under ambient and elevated (ambient + 200 μmol/mol) CO2 concentrations for contrasting ecosystems and for historical and anticipated future climate conditions (representative concentration pathways; RCPs) globally. The gm -explicit simulations using the RCP8.5 scenario resulted in significantly higher increases in gross primary productivity (GPP) in high latitudes (+10% to + 25%), intermediate increases in temperate regions (+5% to + 15%), and slightly lower to moderately higher responses in tropical regions (-2% to +5%), which summed up to moderate GPP increases globally. Similar patterns were found for transpiration, but with a lower magnitude. Our results suggest that the effect of an explicit representation of gm is most important for simulated carbon and water fluxes in the boreal zone, where a cold climate coincides with evergreen vegetation.
| S-EPMC6487956 | biostudies-literature