Vegetation can respond to drought through different mechanisms, including changes in the plants' structure and physiology. A new study led by Dr. Wantong Li and Dr. Rene Orth at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Germany, has now disentangled drought response pathways across the globe.
"Plant physiologists have shown before that individual plant species respond to drought in ways that go beyond simple changes in structural appearance," explains Wantong Li."Our study now confirmed this for the vegetation as a whole, on a global scale and for many species included."
The advantage of the new approach is several-fold. First, including the global effects of drought stress on the biological functioning of the plants provides a better picture of the vegetation drought response than just looking at the structural or outer appearance. Also, the former approach likely underestimates the timing, the scale and the severity at which vegetation is actually affected by drought.
Secondly, the vegetation's physiology typically responds faster to stress than its structural appearance. Drought impacts may thus be recognized earlier. For example, while a brownish meadow may easily be recognized as suffering from drought, other plants, in particular trees, may look normal but in fact already experienced serious drought-induced physiological changes.were affected the most, indicating a strong relationship between background climate and physiological responses.
Dr. René Orth, co-author and head of the research group at MPI-BGC, emphasizes,"Understanding how vegetation functioning responds to is critical for predicting and mitigating the effects of climate change. These findings provide a more accurate basis for the biological and environmental feedback mechanisms of ecosystems, which play an important role in shaping the future of our planet."Wantong Li et al, Widespread and complex drought effects on vegetation physiology inferred from space,
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