Greeing of the Earth and its drivers
Zhu, Zaichun (Zhongguo ke xue yuan. Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research)
Piao, Shilong (Zhongguo ke xue yuan. Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research)
Myneni, Ranga B. (Boston University. Department of Earth and Environment)
Huang, Mengtian (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)
Zeng, Zhenzhong
Canadell, Josep G.
Ciais, Philippe (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)
Sitch, Stephen
Friedlingstein, Pierre
Arneth, Almut
Cao, Chunxiang
Cheng, Lei
Kato, Etsushi
Koven, Charles
Li, Yue (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)
Lian, Xu (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)
Liu, Yongwen (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)
Liu, Ronggao
Mao, Jiafu
Pan, Yaozhong
Peng, Shushi (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)
Peñuelas, Josep (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals)
Poulter, Benjamin
Pugh, Thomas A. M.
Stocker, Benjamin.
Viovy, Nicolas
Wang, Xuhui (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)
Wang, Yingping
Xiao, Zhiqiang
Yang, Hui (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)
Zaehle, Sönke
Zeng, Ning (Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science)

Date:	2016
Abstract:	Global environmental change is rapidly altering the dynamics of terrestrial vegetation, with consequences for the functioning of the Earth system and provision of ecosystem services1, 2. Yet how global vegetation is responding to the changing environment is not well established. Here we use three long-term satellite leaf area index (LAI) records and ten global ecosystem models to investigate four key drivers of LAI trends during 1982-2009. We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO₂ fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO₂ fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau. LCC contributed most to the regional greening observed in southeast China and the eastern United States. The regional effects of unexplained factors suggest that the next generation of ecosystem models will need to explore the impacts of forest demography, differences in regional management intensities for cropland and pastures, and other emerging productivity constraints such as phosphorus availability.
Grants:	European Commission 610028 European Commission 603542 European Commission 282672
Rights:	Aquest material està protegit per drets d'autor i/o drets afins. Podeu utilitzar aquest material en funció del que permet la legislació de drets d'autor i drets afins d'aplicació al vostre cas. Per a d'altres usos heu d'obtenir permís del(s) titular(s) de drets.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió acceptada per publicar
Subject:	Climate-change ecology ; Ecological modelling
Published in:	Nature climate change, Vol. 6 (2016) , p. 791-795, ISSN 1758-6798

DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3004

Post-print 25 p, 2.2 MB

Material suplementari 39 p, 4.0 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > CREAF (Centre de Recerca Ecològica i d'Aplicacions Forestals) > Imbalance-P
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles