Accounting for herbaceous communities in process-based models will advance our understanding of "grassy" ecosystems

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:	Global change biology. - 1999. - 29(2023), 23 vom: 30. Dez., Seite 6453-6477
1. Verfasser:	Wilcox, Kevin R (VerfasserIn)
Weitere Verfasser:	Chen, Anping, Avolio, Meghan L, Butler, Ethan E, Collins, Scott, Fisher, Rosie, Keenan, Trevor, Kiang, Nancy Y, Knapp, Alan K, Koerner, Sally E, Kueppers, Lara, Liang, Guopeng, Lieungh, Eva, Loik, Michael, Luo, Yiqi, Poulter, Ben, Reich, Peter, Renwick, Katherine, Smith, Melinda D, Walker, Anthony, Weng, Ensheng, Komatsu, Kimberly J
Format:	Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	2023
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:	Global change biology
Schlagworte:	Journal Article Review biogeochemistry ecology ecophysiology plant competition plant growth process-based models vegetation demographic models

Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:	© 2023 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Grassland and other herbaceous communities cover significant portions of Earth's terrestrial surface and provide many critical services, such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, and food production. Forecasts of global change impacts on these services will require predictive tools, such as process-based dynamic vegetation models. Yet, model representation of herbaceous communities and ecosystems lags substantially behind that of tree communities and forests. The limited representation of herbaceous communities within models arises from two important knowledge gaps: first, our empirical understanding of the principles governing herbaceous vegetation dynamics is either incomplete or does not provide mechanistic information necessary to drive herbaceous community processes with models; second, current model structure and parameterization of grass and other herbaceous plant functional types limits the ability of models to predict outcomes of competition and growth for herbaceous vegetation. In this review, we provide direction for addressing these gaps by: (1) presenting a brief history of how vegetation dynamics have been developed and incorporated into earth system models, (2) reporting on a model simulation activity to evaluate current model capability to represent herbaceous vegetation dynamics and ecosystem function, and (3) detailing several ecological properties and phenomena that should be a focus for both empiricists and modelers to improve representation of herbaceous vegetation in models. Together, empiricists and modelers can improve representation of herbaceous ecosystem processes within models. In so doing, we will greatly enhance our ability to forecast future states of the earth system, which is of high importance given the rapid rate of environmental change on our planet
Beschreibung:	Date Completed 07.11.2023 Date Revised 07.11.2023 published: Print-Electronic Citation Status MEDLINE
ISSN:	1365-2486
DOI:	10.1111/gcb.16950