Temperature sensitivity of drought-induced tree mortality portends increased regional die-off under global-change-type drought

Large-scale biogeographical shifts in vegetation are predicted in response to the altered precipitation and temperature regimes associated with global climate change. Vegetation shifts have profound ecological impacts and are an important climate-ecosystem feedback through their alteration of carbon, water, and energy exchanges of the land surface. Of particular concern is the potential for warmer temperatures to compound the effects of increasingly severe droughts by triggering widespread vegetation shifts via woody plant mortality. The sensitivity of tree mortality to temperature is dependent on which of 2 non-mutually-exclusive mechanisms predominates--temperature-sensitive carbon starvation in response to…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Awards: DE-FC02-06ER64159, FC02-06ER64159
• UD
  U.S. Department of Agriculture
• CS
  Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service