Dynamic ecosystem assembly and escaping the “fire trap” in the tropics: insights from FATES_15.0.0

作者：J. K. Shuman, Rosie A. Fisher, Charles D. Koven, Ryan Knox, Lara M. Kueppers, Chonggang Xu · 发表于：Geoscientific model development · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.5194/gmd-17-4643-2024 · 被引用次数：7 · 研究领域：Fire effects on ecosystems、Rangeland and Wildlife Management、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies

Abstract. Fire is a fundamental part of the Earth system, with impacts on vegetation structure, biomass, and community composition, the latter mediated in part via key fire-tolerance traits, such as bark thickness. Due to anthropogenic climate change and land use pressure, fire regimes are changing across the world, and fire risk has already increased across much of the tropics. Projecting the impacts of these changes at global scales requires that we capture the selective force of fire on vegetation distribution through vegetation functional traits and size structure. We have adapted the fire behavior and effects module, SPITFIRE (SPread and InTensity of FIRE), for use with the Functionally Assembled Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator (FATES), a size-structured vegetation demographic model. We test how climate, fire regime, and fire-tolerance plant traits interact to determine the biogeography of tropical forests and grasslands. We assign different fire-tolerance strategies based on crown, leaf, and bark characteristics, which are key observed fire-tolerance traits across woody plants. For these simulations, three types of vegetation compete for resources: a fire-vulnerable tree with thin bark, a vulnerable deep crown, and fire-intolerant foliage; a fire-tolerant tree with thick bark, a thin crown, and fire-tolerant foliage; and a fire-promoting C4 grass. We explore the model sensitivity to a critical parameter governing fuel moisture and show that drier fuels promote increased...