Beijing News (Reporter Zhang Lu)**After that, how does forest growth change? Researchers from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found that ** can affect the precipitation redistribution process by changing the land surface structure, thereby affecting the long-term tree growth trend. On February 20, Beijing time, the results were published in Nature Earth Science, providing a new idea for exploring the process and mechanism of interaction between the geosphere.
Schematic diagram of the mechanism by which soil fissures promote precipitation infiltration and thus increase tree growth resilience in drier areas**. Courtesy of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
According to Gao Shan, the first author of the article and associate researcher at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the global mountain forest area is more than 9 million square kilometers, accounting for 23% of the world's total forest area.
The process releases huge energy, and the secondary geological disasters caused by the wave not only cause physical damage such as broken and twisted stems, branches or roots of trees, but also indirectly affect the growth of trees by changing soil structure, hydrological conditions, nutritional status, competition intensity, etc. At present, scientists do not know the spatial pattern and recovery process of the impact of **disturbance on the growth of trees in mountain forests around the world.
Tree rings (tree rings) have the characteristics of wide spatial distribution, high temporal resolution and strong continuity, which can record long-term environmental change information and are a natural carrier for studying the impact on ecosystems. According to the influence of tree ring samples, geographical location, and climate characteristics, the research team divided the global montane forests into seven study areas, and separated the interference information such as ** in the tree ring width series to understand the impact of tree growth.
By establishing the spatiotemporal relationship between the global tree-ring chronology and the events since 1900, the researchers found that in the relatively dry areas of the mid-latitude zone, the growth of trees increased significantly in the last 10 years, and the sensitivity to precipitation response increased, and the underlying mechanism may be that the surface fissures generated after the event promoted the infiltration of precipitation into the deep soil and increased the available water and nutrients for trees. In areas with relatively high annual precipitation, tree growth decreased significantly after the earthquake, possibly due to increased soil erosion and nutrient loss due to more infiltration.
This study reveals the spatiotemporal process of the lithosphere-atmosphere-biosphere multi-sphere chain response, which is a typical case of the processes and functions of the Earth system.
Edited by Fan Yijing
Proofreading by Jun Liu.