Plant hydraulic modelling of leaf and canopy fuel moisture content reveals increasing vulnerability of a Mediterranean forest to wildfires under extreme drought
© 2022 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2022 New Phytologist Foundation. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.
| Veröffentlicht in: | The New phytologist. - 1979. - 237(2023), 4 vom: 23. Feb., Seite 1256-1269 |
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| Weitere Verfasser: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
| Format: | Online-Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | English |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2023
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| Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk: | The New phytologist |
| Schlagworte: | Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't climate change drought forest flammability live fuel moisture content plant hydraulics process-based modelling tree mortality wildfire mehr... |
| Zusammenfassung: | © 2022 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2022 New Phytologist Foundation. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA. Fuel moisture content (FMC) is a crucial driver of forest fires in many regions world-wide. Yet, the dynamics of FMC in forest canopies as well as their physiological and environmental determinants remain poorly understood, especially under extreme drought. We embedded a FMC module in the trait-based, plant-hydraulic SurEau-Ecos model to provide innovative process-based predictions of leaf live fuel moisture content (LFMC) and canopy fuel moisture content (CFMC) based on leaf water potential ( ψ Leaf ). SurEau-Ecos-FMC relies on pressure-volume (p-v) curves to simulate LFMC and vulnerability curves to cavitation to simulate foliage mortality. SurEau-Ecos-FMC accurately reproduced ψ Leaf and LFMC dynamics as well as the occurrence of foliage mortality in a Mediterranean Quercus ilex forest. Several traits related to water use (leaf area index, available soil water, and transpiration regulation), vulnerability to cavitation, and p-v curves (full turgor osmotic potential) had the greatest influence on LFMC and CFMC dynamics. As the climate gets drier, our results showed that drought-induced foliage mortality is expected to increase, thereby significantly decreasing CFMC. Our results represent an important advance in our capacity to understand and predict the sensitivity of forests to wildfires |
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| Beschreibung: | Date Completed 20.01.2023 Date Revised 01.02.2023 published: Print-Electronic Citation Status MEDLINE |
| ISSN: | 1469-8137 |
| DOI: | 10.1111/nph.18614 |