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Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture Recycling as an Ecosystem Service
An ecosystem service is a benefit derived by humanity that can be traced back to an ecological process. Although ecosystem services related to surface water have been thoroughly described, the relationship between atmospheric water and ecosystem services has been mostly neglected, and perhaps misund...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2016
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4801336/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26998832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151993 |
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author | Keys, Patrick W. Wang-Erlandsson, Lan Gordon, Line J. |
author_facet | Keys, Patrick W. Wang-Erlandsson, Lan Gordon, Line J. |
author_sort | Keys, Patrick W. |
collection | PubMed |
description | An ecosystem service is a benefit derived by humanity that can be traced back to an ecological process. Although ecosystem services related to surface water have been thoroughly described, the relationship between atmospheric water and ecosystem services has been mostly neglected, and perhaps misunderstood. Recent advances in land-atmosphere modeling have revealed the importance of terrestrial ecosystems for moisture recycling. In this paper, we analyze the extent to which vegetation sustains the supply of atmospheric moisture and precipitation for downwind beneficiaries, globally. We simulate land-surface evaporation with a global hydrology model and track changes to moisture recycling using an atmospheric moisture budget model, and we define vegetation-regulated moisture recycling as the difference in moisture recycling between current vegetation and a hypothetical desert world. Our results show that nearly a fifth of annual average precipitation falling on land is from vegetation-regulated moisture recycling, but the global variability is large, with many places receiving nearly half their precipitation from this ecosystem service. The largest potential impacts for changes to this ecosystem service are land-use changes across temperate regions in North America and Russia. Likewise, in semi-arid regions reliant on rainfed agricultural production, land-use change that even modestly reduces evaporation and subsequent precipitation, could significantly affect human well-being. We also present a regional case study in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, where we identify the specific moisture recycling ecosystem services associated with the vegetation in Mato Grosso. We find that Mato Grosso vegetation regulates some internal precipitation, with a diffuse region of benefit downwind, primarily to the south and east, including the La Plata River basin and the megacities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. We synthesize our global and regional results into a generalized framework for describing moisture recycling as an ecosystem service. We conclude that future work ought to disentangle whether and how this vegetation-regulated moisture recycling interacts with other ecosystem services, so that trade-offs can be assessed in a comprehensive and sustainable manner. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4801336 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-48013362016-03-23 Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture Recycling as an Ecosystem Service Keys, Patrick W. Wang-Erlandsson, Lan Gordon, Line J. PLoS One Research Article An ecosystem service is a benefit derived by humanity that can be traced back to an ecological process. Although ecosystem services related to surface water have been thoroughly described, the relationship between atmospheric water and ecosystem services has been mostly neglected, and perhaps misunderstood. Recent advances in land-atmosphere modeling have revealed the importance of terrestrial ecosystems for moisture recycling. In this paper, we analyze the extent to which vegetation sustains the supply of atmospheric moisture and precipitation for downwind beneficiaries, globally. We simulate land-surface evaporation with a global hydrology model and track changes to moisture recycling using an atmospheric moisture budget model, and we define vegetation-regulated moisture recycling as the difference in moisture recycling between current vegetation and a hypothetical desert world. Our results show that nearly a fifth of annual average precipitation falling on land is from vegetation-regulated moisture recycling, but the global variability is large, with many places receiving nearly half their precipitation from this ecosystem service. The largest potential impacts for changes to this ecosystem service are land-use changes across temperate regions in North America and Russia. Likewise, in semi-arid regions reliant on rainfed agricultural production, land-use change that even modestly reduces evaporation and subsequent precipitation, could significantly affect human well-being. We also present a regional case study in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, where we identify the specific moisture recycling ecosystem services associated with the vegetation in Mato Grosso. We find that Mato Grosso vegetation regulates some internal precipitation, with a diffuse region of benefit downwind, primarily to the south and east, including the La Plata River basin and the megacities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. We synthesize our global and regional results into a generalized framework for describing moisture recycling as an ecosystem service. We conclude that future work ought to disentangle whether and how this vegetation-regulated moisture recycling interacts with other ecosystem services, so that trade-offs can be assessed in a comprehensive and sustainable manner. Public Library of Science 2016-03-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4801336/ /pubmed/26998832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151993 Text en © 2016 Keys et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Keys, Patrick W. Wang-Erlandsson, Lan Gordon, Line J. Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture Recycling as an Ecosystem Service |
title | Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture Recycling as an Ecosystem Service |
title_full | Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture Recycling as an Ecosystem Service |
title_fullStr | Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture Recycling as an Ecosystem Service |
title_full_unstemmed | Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture Recycling as an Ecosystem Service |
title_short | Revealing Invisible Water: Moisture Recycling as an Ecosystem Service |
title_sort | revealing invisible water: moisture recycling as an ecosystem service |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4801336/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26998832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151993 |
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