Biodiversity matters in feedbacks between climate change and air quality: a study using an individual-based model
Authored by Bin Wang, Manuel T Lerdau, Jacquelyn Shuman
Date Published: 2018
DOI: 10.1002/eap.1721
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Abstract
Air quality is closely associated with climate change via the biosphere
because plants release large quantities of volatile organic compounds
(VOC) that mediate both gaseous pollutants and aerosol dynamics. Earlier
studies, which considered only leaf physiology and simply scale up from
leaf-level enhancements of emissions, suggest that climate warming
enhances whole forest VOC emissions, and these increased VOC emissions
aggravate ozone pollution and secondary organic aerosol formation. Using
an individual-based forest VOC emissions model, UVAFME-VOC, that
simulates system-level emissions by explicitly simulating forest
community dynamics to the individual tree level, ecological competition
among the individuals of differing size and age, and radiative transfer
and leaf function through the canopy, we find that climate warming only
sometimes stimulates isoprene emissions (the single largest source of
non-methane hydrocarbon) in a southeastern U.S. forest. These complex
patterns result from the combination of higher temperatures' stimulating
emissions at the leaf level but decreasing the abundance of
isoprene-emitting taxa at the community level by causing a decline in
the abundance of isoprene-emitting species (Quercus spp.). This
ecological effect eventually outweighs the physiological one, thus
reducing overall emissions. Such reduced emissions have far-reaching
implications for the climate-air-quality relationships that have been
established on the paradigm of warming-enhancement VOC emissions from
vegetation. This local scale modeling study suggests that community
ecology rather than only individual physiology should be integrated into
future studies of biosphere-climate-chemistry interactions.
Tags
Individual-based model
Dynamics
Biodiversity
Mechanism
patterns
growth
Temperature
North-america
Isoprene emission
Deciduous forest
Air quality
Climate warming
Isoprene
Uvafme-voc
Eastern united-states
Organic-compound emissions
European vegetation
change
Forest gap models
Transient-response
Co2 concentration
Important
driver
European vegetation change
Important driver