Significant contribution of non-vascular vegetation to global rainfall interception
- Non-vascular vegetation has been shown to capture considerable quantities of rainfall, which may affect the hydrological cycle and climate at continental scales. However, direct measurements of rainfall interception by non-vascular vegetation are confined to the local scale, which makes extrapolation to the global effects difficult. Here we use a process-based numerical simulation model to show that non-vascular vegetation contributes substantially to global rainfall interception. Inferred average global water storage capacity including non-vascular vegetation was 2.7 mm, which is consistent with field observations and markedly exceeds the values used in land surface models, which average around 0.4 mm. Consequently, we find that the total evaporation of free water from the forest canopy and soil surface increases by 61% when non-vascular vegetation is included, resulting in a global rainfall interception flux that is 22% of the terrestrial evaporative flux (compared with only 12% for simulations where interception excludesNon-vascular vegetation has been shown to capture considerable quantities of rainfall, which may affect the hydrological cycle and climate at continental scales. However, direct measurements of rainfall interception by non-vascular vegetation are confined to the local scale, which makes extrapolation to the global effects difficult. Here we use a process-based numerical simulation model to show that non-vascular vegetation contributes substantially to global rainfall interception. Inferred average global water storage capacity including non-vascular vegetation was 2.7 mm, which is consistent with field observations and markedly exceeds the values used in land surface models, which average around 0.4 mm. Consequently, we find that the total evaporation of free water from the forest canopy and soil surface increases by 61% when non-vascular vegetation is included, resulting in a global rainfall interception flux that is 22% of the terrestrial evaporative flux (compared with only 12% for simulations where interception excludes non-vascular vegetation). We thus conclude that non-vascular vegetation is likely to significantly influence global rainfall interception and evaporation with consequences for regional-to continental-scale hydrologic cycling and climate.…
Author details: | Philipp PoradaORCiDGND, John T. Van StanORCiD, Axel KleidonORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0176-7 |
ISSN: | 1752-0894 |
ISSN: | 1752-0908 |
Title of parent work (English): | Nature geoscience |
Publisher: | Nature Publ. Group |
Place of publishing: | New York |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/07/23 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2021/10/27 |
Volume: | 11 |
Issue: | 8 |
Number of pages: | 7 |
First page: | 563 |
Last Page: | + |
Funding institution: | Bolin Centre for Climate Research; European Union FP7-ENV project PAGE21 [GA282700]; United States National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF) [EAR-1518726] |
Organizational units: | Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Biochemie und Biologie |
DDC classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 57 Biowissenschaften; Biologie / 570 Biowissenschaften; Biologie |
Peer review: | Referiert |