Global patterns of water storage in the rooting zones of vegetation
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2023-03
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Journal Article
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Abstract
The rooting-zone water-storage capacity—the amount of water accessible to plants—controls the sensitivity of land–atmosphere exchange of water and carbon during dry periods. How the rooting-zone water-storage capacity varies spatially is largely unknown and not directly observable. Here we estimate rooting-zone water-storage capacity globally from the relationship between remotely sensed vegetation activity, measured by combining evapotranspiration, sun-induced fuorescence and radiation estimates, and the cumulative water defcit calculated from daily time series of precipitation and evapotranspiration. Our fndings indicate plant-available water stores that exceed the storage capacity of 2-m-deep soils across 37% of Earth’s vegetated surface. We fnd that biome-level variations of rooting-zone water-storage capacities correlate with observed rooting-zone depth distributions and refect the infuence of hydroclimate, as measured by the magnitude of annual cumulative water-defcit extremes. Smaller-scale variations are linked to topography and land use. Our fndings document large spatial variations in the efective root-zone water-storage capacity and illustrate a tight link among the climatology of water defcits, rooting depth of vegetation and its sensitivity to water stress.
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16 (3)
Pages / Article No.
250 - 256
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181115 - next-generation Modelling of the biosphere - Including New Data streams and optimality approaches (SNF)