Empirical evidence for recent global shifts in vegetation resilience

Abstract The character and health of ecosystems worldwide is tightly coupled to changes in Earth’s climate. Theory suggests that ecosystem resilience—the ability of ecosystems to resist and recover from external shocks such as droughts and fires—can be inferred from their natural variability. Here, we quantify vegetation resilience globally with complementary metrics based on two independent long-term satellite records. We first empirically confirm that the recovery rates from large perturbations can be closely approximated from internal vegetation variability across vegetation types and climate zones. On the basis of this empirical relationship, we quantify vegetation resilience continuously and globally from…

• EC
  European Commission

  Award: 820970
• VF
  Volkswagen Foundation
• BF
  Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung

  Award: 01LP1902J
• UP
  Universität Potsdam