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Unveiling the impacts of vapor pressure deficit on forest productivity

Project description

Understanding the impact of atmospheric dryness on forest productivity

Atmospheric dryness, represented by vapour pressure deficit (VPD), plays an important role in determining vegetation productivity and influencing global carbon cycles. As temperatures rise, VPD is expected to increase; yet its effects on carbon uptake by plants remain largely unknown. This uncertainty stems from the scarcity of long-term measurements, which hinders accurate predictions of how future VPD changes will affect global vegetation productivity. To address these challenges, the EU-funded VAPOR project aims to quantify the sensitivity of tree growth to VPD variations using long-term tree-ring data. Additionally, it will disentangle the effects of VPD and soil moisture during heatwaves through high-resolution satellite observations, ultimately refining predictions of forest productivity in a changing climate.

Objective

Atmospheric dryness, which is often quantified as a vapor pressure deficit (VPD), exerts significant influences on vegetation productivity and global carbon cycles. VPD is expected to rise in a warming world, but how this increased atmospheric dryness will impact the carbon uptake by vegetation remains largely unknown. One major challenge is the lack of long-term measurements, which limits studies to the recent decades when satellite and flux measurements are available. Moreover, disentangling the effects of VPD from other highly correlated factors such as soil moisture is difficult. This lack of understanding hampers our ability to make skillful predictions of how future VPD changes induced by climate change will affect vegetation productivity globally.
The VAPOR project seeks to address the existing knowledge gaps through a multi-timescale approach. First, the sensitivity of tree growth to VPD variations will be quantified on the decade-to-century timescale by leveraging global long-term tree-ring measurements as a proxy for forest productivity. Second, the independent effects of VPD and soil moisture on forest productivity during heatwaves will be disentangled using sub-diurnal high-resolution satellite observations from the last decades. Finally, output from global coupled climate simulations will be evaluated based on the insights from the previous findings, and emergent constraints will be applied to mitigate uncertainties in future projects of forest productivity based on relationships emerging from the multi-model ensemble and current observations. The constrained model results will then be used to evaluate the implications of future VPD changes on forest productivity and functioning. By embarking on this endeavor, I aim to deepen the understanding of the influence of VPD on vegetation productivity, while concurrently developing and improving my own research capabilities.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01

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Coordinator

CHALMERS TEKNISKA HOGSKOLA AKTIEBOLAG
Net EU contribution
€ 222 727,68
Address
-
412 96 Goteborg
Sweden
Region
Södra Sverige Västsverige Västra Götalands län
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
No data