From Surface to Ground Water: Water Availability Control on African Forests' Productivity during Severe Meteorological Conditions

AGU 2019 fall meeting

H120 - Science and Applications Results from SMAP and SMOS Missions

From Surface to Ground Water: Water Availability Control on African Forests' Productivity during Severe Meteorological Conditions?

Nima Madani, Nicholas C. Parazoo, John S. Kimball, Ashley P. Ballantyne, Torbern Tagesson, Lucas A. Jones, Rolf H. Reichle, Paul I. Palmer, Isabella Velicogna1, A. Anthony Bloom, Sassan Saatchi, Zhihua Liu, Geruo A

Terrestrial ecosystem productivity constitutes the largest land-atmosphere annual carbon flux and the primary mechanism of photosynthetic fixation of atmospheric CO₂ into plant biomass. Rainfall fluctuations during extreme climate events have shown to have high impact on global carbon cycle. However, the effect of severe climate events on ecosystem productivity in regions such as Africa with lower number of observation is not well assessed yet. Here, we used satellite observation and models from SMAP-L4C, GOME-2 and OCO-2 SIF,CHIRPS rainfall, and GRACE TWS to assess the response of major ecosystems in Africa during the severe climatic conditions from 2003-2017. We found the seasonal gross primary productivity (GPP) in almost every ecosystem in Africa is highly controlled by rainfall. However, inter-annul variability in productivity in dense forested ecosystems is highly associated with soil moisture and ground water lag effects, while over semi-arid regions GPP is controlled by changes in surface water.