Role of post-stress ecosystem recovery in future climatic extremes (PERClimX)

Ecosystem responses to heatwaves and drought are still poorly understood, in particular for the recovery processes after hydraulic damage induced by severe stress.

Post-stress recovery of ecosystems is important to the Earth system because it may 1) affect the overall vegetation variability and thus carbon cycle stability, and 2) affect the intensity and duration of heatwaves and drought through vegetation feedbacks.

However, post-stress ecosystem recovery is usually over-simplified in Earth system models and their possible impacts on both ecosystem and climate under the expected increases in future climate extremes are not well-quantified.

This project aims to fill this gap by developing a process-based post-stress hydraulic recovery scheme in the coupled regional climate-vegetation dynamics mode RC A-GUESS to realistically represent vegetation feedback for better capturing carbon and climate variability under climatic extremes.

The recently available African field measurements and the global database will be used to calibrate the simulated post-stress dynamics.

The updated RCA-GUESS will then be applied to Africa to assess future changes in ecosystem and climate services, including changes in biomass stability and drought duration and intensity, and the overall regional carbon budget under different climate change scenarios.