Publications

Stocker, BD; Tumber-D?vila, SJ; Konings, AG; Anderson, MC; Hain, C; Jackson, RB (2023). Global patterns of water storage in the rooting zones of vegetation. NATURE GEOSCIENCE, 16(3), 250-0.

Abstract
Global estimations of the water-storage capacity in the rooting zone from satellite data reveal plant access to deep water across a third of Earth's vegetated surface. The rooting-zone water-storage capacity-the amount of water accessible to plants-controls the sensitivity of land-atmosphere exchange of water and carbon during dry periods. How the rooting-zone water-storage capacity varies spatially is largely unknown and not directly observable. Here we estimate rooting-zone water-storage capacity globally from the relationship between remotely sensed vegetation activity, measured by combining evapotranspiration, sun-induced fluorescence and radiation estimates, and the cumulative water deficit calculated from daily time series of precipitation and evapotranspiration. Our findings indicate plant-available water stores that exceed the storage capacity of 2-m-deep soils across 37% of Earth's vegetated surface. We find that biome-level variations of rooting-zone water-storage capacities correlate with observed rooting-zone depth distributions and reflect the influence of hydroclimate, as measured by the magnitude of annual cumulative water-deficit extremes. Smaller-scale variations are linked to topography and land use. Our findings document large spatial variations in the effective root-zone water-storage capacity and illustrate a tight link among the climatology of water deficits, rooting depth of vegetation and its sensitivity to water stress.

DOI:
10.1038/s41561-023-01125-2

ISSN:
1752-0908