Research has now begun in earnest in the Drought Research Program with all key staff finally in place. This has proved timely. At the time of writing (August 2018) most of NSW has been drought declared and forecasters suggesting little sign of drought-breaking rains over coming months.
A new study by CLEX researchers using observations from FLUXNET sites identifies regions of high and low predictability and will likely help improve land surface model evaluation.
New research clearly demonstrates the potential to predict long-term LAI using simple ecohydrological theory. This approach could potentially be incorporated into existing terrestrial biosphere models and help improve predictions of LAI.
This research suggests some trees and in particular, Australian trees, may be more resilient than expected to future warming and extreme events. These findings have implications for planning around which species to plant in “green cities” to help mitigate future climate extremes.
The application of a simple carbon balance model, combined with a data assimilation approach, has the potential to improve the process understanding embedded in models, which is used to predict responses of the carbon cycle to climate change.
This project will connect plant water use and stomatal conductance models differentiated by vegetation-soil systems with land surface models to provide new insight into the impacts of the built environment on moisture fluxes that influence heatwave intensity. Then it will investigate the climate impacts of the dynamic response of greenery in extreme heat conditions.
In 2005 the Amazon experienced a once in a century drought. Five years later, in 2010, it was struck by an even worse drought, with even lower rainfall occurring in the dry season. However, the response of the Amazon forest to these two once-in-a-century events showed marked differences.
The reduction in growth of plants restricted by limitations on nutrients, temperature and/or water stress, didn't just reduce photosynthesis but led to negative feedbacks in plant carbon balance processes.
This study explored the key sources of uncertainty when scaling leaf-level understanding of water-use efficiency to ecosystem scales. The results provide key insights into interpreting (ecosystem-scale) eddy-covariance derived water-use efficiency in an ecophysiological context.