Tree height strongly affects estimates of water-use efficiency responses to climate and CO2 using isotopes

Abstract

Various studies report substantial increases in intrinsic water-use efficiency (W i ), estimated using carbon isotopes in tree rings, suggesting trees are gaining increasingly more carbon per unit water lost due to increases in atmospheric CO2. Usually, reconstructions do not, however, correct for the effect of intrinsic developmental changes in W i as trees grow larger. Here we show, by comparing W i across varying tree sizes at one CO2 level, that ignoring such developmental effects can severely affect inferences of trees’ W i . W i doubled or even tripled over a trees’ lifespan in three broadleaf species due to changes in tree height and light availability alone, and there are also weak trends for Pine trees. Developmental trends in broadleaf species are as large as the trends previously assigned to CO2 and climate. Credible future tree ring isotope studies require explicit accounting for species-specific developmental effects before CO2 and climate effects are inferred.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Brienen, RJW https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5397-5755 Gloor, E https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9384-6341 Clerici, S Newton, R https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0144-6867 Arppe, L Boom, A Bottrell, S Callaghan, M Heaton, T Helama, S Helle, G Leng, MJ Mielikäinen, K Oinonen, M Timonen, M
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2017. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Accepted: 9 June 2017 Published (online): 18 August 2017 Published: 18 August 2017
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number NERC NE/D01025X/1 NERC NE/K01353X/1 NERC NE/K01644X/1 RCUK NE/M02203X/1 British Council, UK 275556724 RCUK NE/M022021/1
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	28 Sep 2017 13:37
Last Modified:	13 Oct 2020 11:51
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-017-00225-z
Related URLs:	Author
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:121761

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Tree height strongly affects estimates of water-use efficiency responses to climate and CO2 using isotopes

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