This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adr6700. This is version 4 of this Preprint.

Coupled, decoupled, and abrupt responses of vegetation to climate across timescales
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Abstract
Climate and ecosystem dynamics vary across timescales, but research into climate-driven vegetation dynamics usually focuses on singular timescales. We develop a spectral analysis- based approach that provides detailed estimates of the timescales at which vegetation tracks climate change, from 10^1 to 10^5 years. We report similarity ofvegetation and climate even at centennial frequencies (149^-1 to 18,012^-1 year^-1, that is, one cycle per 149 to 18,012 years). A breakpoint in vegetation turnover (797^-1 year^-1) matches a breakpoint between stochastic and autocorrelated climate processes, suggesting that ecological dynamics are governed by climate across these frequencies. Heightened vegetation turnover at millennial frequencies (4,650^-1 year^-1) highlights the risk of abrupt responses to climate change, wherease vegetation-climate decoupling at frequencies >149^-1 year^-1 may indicate long-lasting consequences of anthropogenic climate change for ecosystem function and biodiversity.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31223/X5S98P
Subjects
Earth Sciences
Keywords
Spectral power continuum, community turnover, climate variability, dynamic equilibrium, non-linear ecological dynamics, temporal beta diversity, Vegetation, community turnover, Climate variability, dynamic equilibrium, non-linear ecological dynamics, temporal beta diversity, Vegetation
Dates
Published: 2024-07-12 12:12
Last Updated: 2025-08-05 23:43
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License
CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Data Availability (Reason not available):
Data and code needed to reproduce all analyses are available on Zenodo (doi: 10.5281/zenodo.12726799).
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