Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2011 Oct;26(10):523-32. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2011.06.003. Epub 2011 Jul 29.
Climate-driven vegetation mortality is occurring globally and is predicted to increase in the near future. The expected climate feedbacks of regional-scale mortality events have intensified the need to improve the simple mortality algorithms used for future predictions, but uncertainty regarding mortality processes precludes mechanistic modeling. By integrating new evidence from a wide range of fields, we conclude that hydraulic function and carbohydrate and defense metabolism have numerous potential failure points, and that these processes are strongly interdependent, both with each other and with destructive pathogen and insect populations. Crucially, most of these mechanisms and their interdependencies are likely to become amplified under a warmer, drier climate. Here, we outline the observations and experiments needed to test this interdependence and to improve simulations of this emergent global phenomenon.
气候驱动的植被死亡正在全球范围内发生，并预计在不久的将来会增加。区域性大规模死亡事件的预期气候反馈加剧了改进用于未来预测的简单死亡率算法的必要性，但对死亡过程的不确定性排除了机械建模的可能性。通过整合来自广泛领域的新证据，我们得出结论，水力功能以及碳水化合物和防御代谢有许多潜在的失效点，并且这些过程彼此之间以及与破坏性的病原体和昆虫种群之间相互依存关系很强。至关重要的是，在更温暖、更干燥的气候下，这些机制及其相互依存关系很可能会加剧。在这里，我们概述了进行这些测试所需的观察和实验，以检验这种相互依存关系，并改进对这种新出现的全球现象的模拟。
