ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1649987
This article is part of the Research TopicEnhancing Woody Plant Growth and Resilience Through Nature-Based SolutionsView all 7 articles
Moisture Legacy Effects Shape Vegetation Productivity Across East Asian Ecosystems, 2001-2020
Provisionally accepted
- 1Northeast Forestry University College of Forestry, Harbin, China
- 2Northeastern University - Oakland Campus, Oakland, United States
- 3Changzhou Architectural Research Institute Group Co Ltd, Changzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study investigated spatiotemporal patterns of growing season gross primary productivity (GPPGS) across three vegetation types in mid-to-high latitude East Asia from 2001-2020. GPPGS increased significantly overall (4.12 gC/m²/yr), with deciduous broad-leaved forest (DBF) having highest productivity (1035.52 gC/m²), followed by deciduous needle-leaved forest (DNF) (830.83 gC/m²) and grassland (800.62 gC/m²). A critical divergence occurred around 2014, when grassland and DNF growth rates declined substantially while DBF maintained steady increases. Phenological factors showed limited explanatory power for GPP variations, albeit GPP are sensitive to vegetation peak growth time for all three vegetation types. Climate analysis identified relative humidity (RH) as the dominant driver, with the previous year's growing season RH showing around 35.91% stronger positive correlations than current year values across all vegetation types; the difference is highest in DNF and the least in grassland. We conclude that the legacy effects of atmospheric moisture conditions explained the 2014 divergence, highlighting the increasing importance of water availability under global warming. Increases in atmospheric dryness accompanied by temperature increases will affect vegetation carbon storage and the societal-economic services provided by these ecosystems.
Keywords: gross primary productivity, vegetation phenology, Climate Change, relative humidity, soil moisture
Received: 19 Jun 2025; Accepted: 15 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zheng, Henderson, Liu, Chen, Deng, Gu and Gong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Binhui Liu, Northeast Forestry University College of Forestry, Harbin, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.