edu.ucar.opensky::articles:18353 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-26T02:50:37.708764 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7rf5wm5 Terrestrial carbon balance in a drier world: the effects of water availability in southwestern North America 2016-05-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7rf5wm5 https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13222 Biederman, J. author Scott, R. author Goulden, M. author Vargas, R. author Litvak, M. author Kolb, T. author Yepez, E. author Oechel, W. author Blanken, P. author Bell, T. author Garatuza-Payan, J. author Maurer, G. author Dore, S. author Burns, Sean author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher Global modeling efforts indicate semiarid regions dominate the increasing trend and interannual variation of net CO₂ exchange with the atmosphere, mainly driven by water availability. Many semiarid regions are expected to undergo climatic drying, but the impacts on net CO₂ exchange are poorly understood due to limited semiarid flux observations. Here we evaluated 121 site-years of annual eddy covariance measurements of net and gross CO₂ exchange (photosynthesis and respiration), precipitation, and evapotranspiration (ET) in 21 semiarid North American ecosystems with an observed range of 100 - 1000 mm in annual precipitation and records of 4-9 years each. In addition to evaluating spatial relationships among CO₂ and water fluxes across sites, we separately quantified site-level temporal relationships, representing sensitivity to interannual variation. Across the climatic and ecological gradient, photosynthesis showed a saturating spatial relationship to precipitation, whereas the photosynthesis-ET relationship was linear, suggesting ET was a better proxy for water available to drive CO₂ exchanges after hydrologic losses. Both photosynthesis and respiration showed similar site-level sensitivity to interannual changes in ET among the 21 ecosystems. Furthermore, these temporal relationships were not different from the spatial relationships of long-term mean CO₂ exchanges with climatic ET. Consequently, a hypothetical 100-mm change in ET, whether short term or long term, was predicted to alter net ecosystem production (NEP) by 64 gCm⁻² yr⁻¹. Most of the unexplained NEP variability was related to persistent, site-specific function, suggesting prioritization of research on slow-changing controls. Common temporal and spatial sensitivity to water availability increases our confidence that site-level responses to interannual weather can be extrapolated for prediction of CO₂ exchanges over decadal and longer timescales relevant to societal response to climate change. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2016 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. None eng geoscientificInformation