Remote monitoring of plant drought stress with the apparent heat capacity.

Drought stress has profound impacts on ecosystems and societies, particularly in the context of climate change. Traditional drought indicators, which often rely on integrated water budget anomalies at various time scales, provide valuable insights but often fail to deliver clear, real-time assessments of vegetation stress. This study introduces the Cooling Efficiency Factor Index (CEFI), a novel metric purely derived from geostationary satellite observations, to detect vegetation drought stress by analyzing daytime surface warming anomalies.

Phosphorus constrains global photosynthesis more than nitrogen does.

Global vegetation growth is thought to be limited by nitrogen (N) more than by other nutrients. Here we document a stronger phosphorus (P) limitation on global photosynthesis compared with N over the last four decades. On the basis of more than 80,000 field observations of foliar nutrients and a machine learning method, we generated a long-term global dataset of foliar N and P concentrations for the period 1980-2017.

Securing the forest carbon sink for the European Union's climate ambition.

The European Union (EU) climate policies rely on a functioning forest carbon sink. Forests cover about 40% of the EU area and have absorbed about 436 Mt of carbon dioxide equivalent per year between 1990 and 2022, which is about 10% of the EU's anthropogenic emissions. However, the ability of forests to act as carbon sinks is rapidly declining owing to increasing natural and anthropogenic pressures, threatening the EU's climate goals and calling for prompt actions.

Assessing the risk of diseases with epidemic and pandemic potential in a changing world.

How do human activities contribute to the emergence of zoonotic diseases that can lead to epidemics and pandemics? Our analysis of common drivers of the World Health Organization's priority diseases suggests that climate conditions, including higher temperatures, higher annual precipitation levels, and water deficits, elevate the risk of disease outbreaks. In addition, land-use changes, human encroachment on forested areas, increased population and livestock density, and biodiversity loss contribute to this risk, with biodiversity loss showing a complex and nonlinear relationship. This study also presents a global risk map and an epidemic risk index that combines countries' specific risk with their capacities for preparing and responding to zoonotic threats.

Pervasive but biome-dependent relationship between fragmentation and resilience in forests.

The relationship between landscape fragmentation and vegetation resilience is uncertain. Here we use multiple satellite-based tree cover data and vegetation indices to quantify the apparent effects of fragmentation on global forest resilience and potential mechanisms thereof. We measure fragmentation as edge density, patch density and mean patch area of tree cover patches, and measure resilience as one-lag temporal autocorrelation of vegetation indices.

Potential tree cover under current and future climate scenarios.

Forests play a key role in the global commitments to reach carbon neutrality in the coming decades. Global maps of potential tree cover at high spatial resolution for current and future climate scenarios are needed to assess the risk of future forest carbon loss and carbon storage potential through afforestation/reforestation projects. Here, we present data integrating satellite-based tree cover observations into a machine learning framework to estimate tree cover carrying capacity (percentage of tree coverage), which reflects the maximum potential tree cover, accounting for natural disturbances.

The urgency of addressing zoonotic diseases surveillance: Potential opportunities considering One Health approaches and common European Data Spaces.

Currently, transdisciplinary data from animal surveillance that are available for One Health approaches to public health are scarce, negatively impacting our ability to anticipate and prepare for future public health threats, particularly those involving zoonotic diseases with pandemic or epidemic potential. In this article, we explore the potential of the common European Data Spaces framework to enhance the availability of animal surveillance data, in order to better address public health threats. We propose building upon and expanding existing initiatives, such as the European Data Spaces for Health, Agriculture, and Green Deal, to design innovative services.

Stand age diversity (and more than climate change) affects forests' resilience and stability, although unevenly.

Stand age significantly influences the functioning of forest ecosystems by shaping structural and physiological plant traits, affecting water and carbon budgets. Forest age distribution is determined by the interplay of tree mortality and regeneration, influenced by both natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Unfortunately, human-driven alteration of tree age distribution presents an underexplored avenue for enhancing forest stability and resilience.

Transition from positive to negative indirect CO effects on the vegetation carbon uptake.

Although elevated atmospheric CO concentration (eCO) has substantial indirect effects on vegetation carbon uptake via associated climate change, their dynamics remain unclear. Here we investigate how the impacts of eCO-driven climate change on growing-season gross primary production have changed globally during 1982-2014, using satellite observations and Earth system models, and evaluate their evolution until the year 2100. We show that the initial positive effect of eCO-induced climate change on vegetation carbon uptake has declined recently, shifting to negative in the early 21st century.

Large diurnal compensatory effects mitigate the response of Amazonian forests to atmospheric warming and drying.

Photosynthesis and evapotranspiration in Amazonian forests are major contributors to the global carbon and water cycles. However, their diurnal patterns and responses to atmospheric warming and drying at regional scale remain unclear, hindering the understanding of global carbon and water cycles. Here, we used proxies of photosynthesis and evapotranspiration from the International Space Station to reveal a strong depression of dry season afternoon photosynthesis (by 6.

Spatially-optimized urban greening for reduction of population exposure to land surface temperature extremes.

The population experiencing high temperatures in cities is rising due to anthropogenic climate change, settlement expansion, and population growth. Yet, efficient tools to evaluate potential intervention strategies to reduce population exposure to Land Surface Temperature (LST) extremes are still lacking. Here, we implement a spatial regression model based on remote sensing data that is able to assess the population exposure to LST extremes in urban environments across 200 cities based on surface properties like vegetation cover and distance to water bodies.

Releasing global forests from human management: How much more carbon could be stored?

Carbon storage in forests is a cornerstone of policy-making to prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5°C. However, the global impact of management (for example, harvesting) on the carbon budget of forests remains poorly quantified.

Toward a roadmap for space-based observations of the land sector for the UNFCCC global stocktake.

Space-based remote sensing can make an important contribution toward monitoring greenhouse gas emissions and removals from the agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) sector, and to understanding and addressing human-caused climate change through the UNFCCC Paris Agreement. Space agencies have begun to coordinate their efforts to identify needs, collect and harmonize available data and efforts, and plan and maintain a long-term roadmap for observations. International cooperation is crucial in developing and realizing the roadmap, and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) is a key coordinating driver of this effort.

Climate-driven vegetation greening further reduces water availability in drylands.

Climate change alters surface water availability (WA; precipitation minus evapotranspiration, P - ET) and consequently impacts agricultural production and societal water needs, leading to increasing concerns on the sustainability of water use. Although the direct effects of climate change on WA have long been recognized and assessed, indirect climate effects occurring through adjustments in terrestrial vegetation are more subtle and not yet fully quantified. To address this knowledge gap, here we investigate the interplay between climate-induced changes in leaf area index (LAI) and ET and quantify its ultimate effect on WA during the period 1982-2016 at the global scale, using an ensemble of data-driven products and land surface models.

Emerging signals of declining forest resilience under climate change.

Forest ecosystems depend on their capacity to withstand and recover from natural and anthropogenic perturbations (that is, their resilience). Experimental evidence of sudden increases in tree mortality is raising concerns about variation in forest resilience, yet little is known about how it is evolving in response to climate change. Here we integrate satellite-based vegetation indices with machine learning to show how forest resilience, quantified in terms of critical slowing down indicators, has changed during the period 2000-2020.

EU-Trees4F, a dataset on the future distribution of European tree species.

We present "EU-Trees4F", a dataset of current and future potential distributions of 67 tree species in Europe at 10 km spatial resolution. We provide both climatically suitable future areas of occupancy and the future distribution expected under a scenario of natural dispersal for two emission scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.

Vegetation-based climate mitigation in a warmer and greener World.

The mitigation potential of vegetation-driven biophysical effects is strongly influenced by the background climate and will therefore be influenced by global warming. Based on an ensemble of remote sensing datasets, here we first estimate the temperature sensitivities to changes in leaf area over the period 2003-2014 as a function of key environmental drivers. These sensitivities are then used to predict temperature changes induced by future leaf area dynamics under four scenarios.

Response to Comments on "Recent global decline of CO fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis".

Our study suggests that the global CO fertilization effect (CFE) on vegetation photosynthesis has declined during the past four decades. The Comments suggest that the temporal inconsistency in AVHRR data and the attribution method undermine the results’ robustness. Here, we provide additional evidence that these arguments did not affect our finding and that the global decline in CFE is robust.

The three major axes of terrestrial ecosystem function.

The leaf economics spectrum and the global spectrum of plant forms and functions revealed fundamental axes of variation in plant traits, which represent different ecological strategies that are shaped by the evolutionary development of plant species. Ecosystem functions depend on environmental conditions and the traits of species that comprise the ecological communities. However, the axes of variation of ecosystem functions are largely unknown, which limits our understanding of how ecosystems respond as a whole to anthropogenic drivers, climate and environmental variability.

Revealing the widespread potential of forests to increase low level cloud cover.

Forests play a key role in humanity's current challenge to mitigate climate change thanks to their capacity to sequester carbon. Preserving and expanding forest cover is considered essential to enhance this carbon sink. However, changing the forest cover can further affect the climate system through biophysical effects.