Recent Advances Combining Remote Sensing Data with Advanced Models to Assess Disturbance Related Plant-Climate Interactions.

Abstract:

Terrestrial ecosystem dynamics are strongly influenced by processes of disturbance and recovery across a range of spatial and temporal scales, from large catastrophic events including tropical cyclones, fires, and pest outbreaks, to fine-scale forest canopy gap dynamics. Natural disturbances episodically alter vegetation structure and create important fluxes of carbon from vegetation to coarse woody debris and litter, and can alter land surface properties important for climate. Similarly, anthropogenic disturbances have the capacity to alter important land surface properties. Recovery following disturbances tends to restore vegetation structure and carbon over longer time scales as vegetation regrows and debris decomposes and land surface properties are restored. The complex spatial pattern from a legacy of past events, together with ongoing and potentially changing future events, presents a challenge not only for understanding, but also for prediction. As many disturbance processes are climate related, being climate driven and/or producing affects on climate through biophysical or biogeochemical alterations of the land surface, disturbance is a critical link in understanding plant-climate interactions. Here we review past progress, current results, and future priorities for utilizing remote sensing data in advanced models to understand of the role of disturbance in plant-climate interactions. Recent advances have helped to quantify the long term impacts of hurricanes on forests, account for recent forest disturbance events, quantify the vulnerability of ecosystems to potential future disturbance rates, and project future vegetation change in response to climate change, and reduce uncertainty through improved initial conditions accounting for the history of past disturbance events. Now, a new generation of land use data are being developed constrained by remote sensing to drive the next generation of Earth system models to estimate the effects of anthropogenic disturbances on climate (past-future). With parallel advances in remote sensing and modeling, we are entering a new era in the understanding plant-climate interactions.