Ecohydrological dynamics of the seasonally dry forest of the Yucatan Peninsula as a response to the variability of precipitation, energy and access to groundwater
Abstract
The seasonal dry forest located to the northwest of the Yucatan Peninsula is a highly threatened ecosystem and little is known about its eco-hydrology and response to climate variability. For this reason, we established, in 2016, an ecohydrological monitoring site within "El Palmar" natural state reserve of Yucatan. We studied the inter and intra-annual dynamics of this forest by observing the vertical exchanges of water and CO2 fluxes, obtained with the Eddy Covariance method, and analyzed together with bio-meteorological data (precipitation, radiation and EVI) from field measurements (2.6 years) and remote sensing (19 years) data. CO2 and water fluxes are strongly controlled by the seasonality and magnitude in precipitation pulses leading to the possibility of dry-season water access from the shallow aquifer. The forest acts as a continuous carbon sink, capturing between 1 and 6 ton_C/ha/yr, and whose performance responds to a threshold of precipitation above which its productivity decreases. Differences in the ecosystem productivity among years result from a combination of precipitation (as first-order control), energy availability during the growing season and variable access to groundwater during the post-rainy and dry seasons (as second order controls). This study reports gas exchanges between the land and atmosphere in a seasonally-dry tropical forest in a region of the world characterized by the scarcity of measurements and provides a first look at the processes controlling the dynamics of a vulnerable ecosystem.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMGC020..08U
- Keywords:
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- 0426 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1655 Water cycles;
- GLOBAL CHANGE