Climate Change Impacts on Future Carbon Stores and Management of Warm Deserts of the United States

On the Ground • Reducing atmospheric CO2 through enhanced terrestrial carbon storage may help slow or reverse the rate of global climate change. However, information on how climate change in the Southwest might affect the balance between CO2 uptake and loss on semiarid rangelands is not easily accessible to land managers. • We summarize studies that focus on key components of carbon exchange across the warm deserts of North America to determine if common trends exist that can be used in management. • Management strategies that increase carbon sequestration or decrease carbon loss are especially important. Thus managers will need to know what management practices are likely to promote carbon storage or minimize losses during critical time periods.The Rangelands archives are made available by the Society for Range Management and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform March 202

Seasonal, not annual precipitation drives community productivity across ecosystems

Understanding drivers of aboveground net primary production (ANPP) has long been a goal of ecology. Decades of investigation have shown total annual precipitation to be an important determinant of ANPP within and across ecosystems. Recently a few studies at individual sites have shown precipitation during specific seasons of the year can more effectively predict ANPP. Here we determined whether seasonal or total precipitation better predicted ANPP across a range of terrestrial ecosystems, from deserts to forests, using long-term data from 36 plant communities. We also determined whether ANPP responses were dependent on ecosystem type or plant functional group. We found that seasonal precipitation generally explained ANPP better than total precipitation. Precipitation in multiple parts of the growing season often correlated with ANPP, but rarely interacted with each other. Surprisingly, the amount of variation explained by seasonal precipitation was not correlated with ecosystem type or plant functional group. Overall, examining seasonal precipitation can significantly improve ANPP predictions across a broad range of ecosystems and plant types, with implications for understanding current and future ANPP variation. Further work examining precipitation timing relative to species phenology may further improve our ability to predict ANPP, especially in response to climate change