Landscape position strongly affects the resistance and resilience to water deficit anomaly of floodplain vegetation community

Ecohydrology. 2018;11:e2027. https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.2027 Abstract The continuous provision of ecological services by wetlands is largely dependent on the stability of ecosystem functions such as biomass production. Biomass production is in turn strongly impacted by the frequency, duration, and intensity of climate extremes such as droughts and floods. This is particularly true for the floodplain wetlands in the Murray–Darling basin, Australia, which exhibits high interannual and interdecal climatic variability. In this study, we evaluated the ecological resistance and resilience to water deficit anomalies in terms of biomass production for the major woody floodplain vegetation community types (VCT) in the semiarid northern‐west of New South Wales including River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) forest, Black Box (Eucalyptus largiflorens), Coolibah (Eucalyptus coolabah) woodlands, and Lignum (Duma florulenta) shrublands. Our hypothesis is that different VCTs have different trends of biomass production over time by virtue of their landscape position. Landscape position was defined by the weighted distance to water courses (DIST) and local deviation of elevation from global mean. Biomass production stability in response to water deficit anomalies was modelled using time series (2000–2016) of the normalized difference vegetation index and hydrological and meteorological drought indices. We found that (a) River Red Gum forest exhibits higher resistance and resilience than other VCTs, (b) vegetation located closer to water courses has significantly higher resilience, (c) the resistance to drought indices is not significantly different across landscape positions, and (d) distance to water course is more important than topography in terms of effects on ecological resistance and resilience.

[1]  Alfredo R. Huete,et al.  Leaf development and demography explain photosynthetic seasonality in Amazon evergreen forests , 2016, Science.

[2]  S. Ganguly,et al.  Amazon forests did not green‐up during the 2005 drought , 2009 .

[3]  R. Mata-González,et al.  Phreatophytic Vegetation and Groundwater Fluctuations: A Review of Current Research and Application of Ecosystem Response Modeling with an Emphasis on Great Basin Vegetation , 2005, Environmental management.

[4]  Laurent Tits,et al.  A model quantifying global vegetation resistance and resilience to short‐term climate anomalies and their relationship with vegetation cover , 2015 .

[5]  N. McDowell,et al.  Drought and resprouting plants. , 2015, The New phytologist.

[6]  R. Fensholt,et al.  Assessing European ecosystem stability to drought in the vegetation growing season , 2016 .

[7]  R. Clarke,et al.  Green Tongues into the Arid Zone: River Floodplains Extend the Distribution of Terrestrial Bird Species , 2017, Ecosystems.

[8]  K. Price,et al.  Temporal responses of NDVI to precipitation and temperature in the central Great Plains, USA , 2003 .

[9]  M. Scheffer,et al.  Robustness of variance and autocorrelation as indicators of critical slowing down. , 2012, Ecology.

[10]  S. Capon,et al.  Vegetation resilience to mega-drought along a typical floodplain gradient of the southern Murray-Darling Basin, Australia , 2016 .

[11]  A. Dai.  Drought under global warming: a review , 2011 .

[12]  P. Baker,et al.  Dynamics of Murray‐Darling floodplain forests under multiple stressors: The past, present, and future of an Australian icon , 2011 .

[13]  Keith F. Walker,et al.  Flow variability and the ecology of large rivers , 1998 .

[14]  F. Hughes.  The ecology of African floodplain forests in semi-arid and arid zones: a review , 1988 .

[15]  More than just drought: complexity of recruitment patterns in Mediterranean forests , 2014, Oecologia.

[16]  N. Saintilan,et al.  Local climate determines the NDVI-based primary productivity and flooding creates heterogeneity in semi-arid floodplain ecosystem , 2012 .

[17]  Simon C. Potter,et al.  A Genome-Wide Association Search for Type 2 Diabetes Genes in African Americans , 2012, PLoS ONE.

[18]  N. Breda,et al.  Temperate forest trees and stands under severe drought: a review of ecophysiological responses, adaptation processes and long-term consequences , 2006 .

[19]  A. Robertson,et al.  The responses of floodplain primary production to flood frequency and timing , 2001 .

[20]  Achim Zeileis,et al.  Remotely sensed resilience of tropical forests , 2016 .

[21]  C. Field,et al.  Relationships Between NDVI, Canopy Structure, and Photosynthesis in Three Californian Vegetation Types , 1995 .

[22]  S. Sisson,et al.  Developing state and transition models of floodplain vegetation dynamics as a tool for conservation decision-making: a case study of the Macquarie Marshes Ramsar wetland , 2015 .

[23]  M. Brock,et al.  Drought and aquatic community resilience: the role of eggs and seeds in sediments of temporary wetlands , 2003 .

[24]  A. Craig,et al.  Effects of Edaphic Factors and Flood Frequency on the Abundance of Lignum (Muehlenbeckia florulenta Meissner) (Polygonaceae) on the River Murray Floodplain, South Australia , 1991 .

[25]  P. Baker,et al.  Forest structure, flooding and grazing predict understorey composition of floodplain forests in southeastern Australia , 2012 .

[26]  Y. Benjamini,et al.  Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing , 1995 .

[27]  I. Jolly,et al.  A review of groundwater–surface water interactions in arid/semi‐arid wetlands and the consequences of salinity for wetland ecology , 2008 .

[28]  Peter J. Thorburn,et al.  Sources of water used by riparian Eucalyptus camaldulensis overlying highly saline groundwater , 1994, Oecologia.

[29]  D. Tilman.  Biodiversity: Population Versus Ecosystem Stability , 1995 .

[30]  R. Kingsford,et al.  Inundation requirements for persistence and recovery of river red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) in semi-arid Australia , 2015 .

[31]  A. Weigelt,et al.  Grassland Resistance and Resilience after Drought Depends on Management Intensity and Species Richness , 2012, PloS one.

[32]  G. Meehl,et al.  More Intense, More Frequent, and Longer Lasting Heat Waves in the 21st Century , 2004, Science.

[33]  F. Berendse,et al.  Diversity enhances community recovery, but not resistance, after drought , 2010 .

[34]  M. E. Jiménez-Hernández,et al.  Model of hydrological behaviour of the anthropized semiarid wetland of Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park (Spain) based on surface water–groundwater interactions , 2013, Hydrogeology Journal.

[35]  N. Saintilan,et al.  Climate phase drives canopy condition in a large semi-arid floodplain forest. , 2015, Journal of environmental management.

[36]  J. Terborgh,et al.  Amazon forest response to repeated droughts , 2016 .

[37]  N. McDowell,et al.  A global overview of drought and heat-induced tree mortality reveals emerging climate change risks for forests , 2010 .

[38]  Samantha J. Capon,et al.  Flood variability and spatial variation in plant community composition and structure on a large arid floodplain , 2005 .

[39]  Stuart E. Bunn,et al.  Assessing the seasonal dynamics of inundation, turbidity, and aquatic vegetation in the Australian wet–dry tropics using optical remote sensing , 2013 .

[40]  J. Peñuelas,et al.  Widespread crown condition decline, food web disruption, and amplified tree mortality with increased climate change-type drought , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[41]  J. Ocock,et al.  Floodplain Wetland Biota in the Murray-Darling Basin: Water and Habitat Requirements , 2011 .

[42]  F. Valladares,et al.  Global change and the evolution of phenotypic plasticity in plants , 2010, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[43]  F. Comiti,et al.  Relationships between woody vegetation and geomorphological patterns in three gravel-bed rivers with different intensities of anthropogenic disturbance , 2016 .

[44]  L. Leung,et al.  Exploring new topography-based subgrid spatial structures for improving land surface modeling , 2017 .

[45]  Li Wen,et al.  Reconstruction natural flow in a regulated system, the Murrumbidgee River, Australia, using time series analysis , 2009 .

[46]  Anthony R. Ives,et al.  Measuring Resilience in Stochastic Systems , 1995 .

[47]  Andrew K. Skidmore,et al.  Estimation of green grass/herb biomass from airborne hyperspectral imagery using spectral indices and partial least squares regression , 2007, Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinformation.

[48]  K. Walker,et al.  Hydrological persistence and the ecology of dryland rivers , 2000 .

[49]  S. Kanae,et al.  Global flood risk under climate change , 2013 .

[50]  A. Robertson,et al.  Riparian bird communities in relation to land management practices in floodplain woodlands of south-eastern Australia , 2001 .

[51]  Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano,et al.  Response of vegetation to drought time-scales across global land biomes , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[52]  Laurent Tits,et al.  Species-rich semi-natural grasslands have a higher resistance but a lower resilience than intensively managed agricultural grasslands in response to climate anomalies , 2016 .

[53]  Tim R. McVicar,et al.  Assessing the differences in sensitivities of runoff to changes in climatic conditions across a large basin , 2011 .

[54]  G. Walker,et al.  Variations in stream water uptake by Eucalyptus camaldulensis with differing access to stream water , 1994, Oecologia.

[55]  Ralph Mac Nally,et al.  Groundwater change forecasts widespread forest dieback across an extensive floodplain system , 2011 .

[56]  Kurt H. Riitters,et al.  Detecting changes in riparian habitat conditions based on patterns of greenness change: A case study from the Upper San Pedro River Basin, USA , 2008 .

[57]  Joanne Ling,et al.  An investigation of the hydrological requirements of River Red Gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) Forest, using Classification and Regression Tree modelling , 2009 .

[58]  Alfredo Huete,et al.  A 20-year study of NDVI variability over the Northeast Region of Brazil , 2006 .

[59]  B. Croke,et al.  Can NDVI response indicate the effective flood extent in macrophyte dominated floodplain wetlands , 2014 .

[60]  Dale A. Devitt,et al.  Invasive capacity of Tamarix ramosissima in a Mojave Desert floodplain: the role of drought , 1997, Oecologia.

[61]  A. Strahler,et al.  Monitoring vegetation phenology using MODIS , 2003 .

[62]  W. Junk.  The flood pulse concept in river-floodplain systems , 1989 .

[63]  C. S. Holling.  Engineering Resilience versus Ecological Resilience , 1996 .

[64]  M. Parsons,et al.  The response of dryland floodplain vegetation productivity to flooding and drying , 2016 .

[65]  P. Nagler,et al.  Quantifying water requirements of riparian river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia – implications for the management of environmental flows , 2015 .

[66]  D. Baldwin,et al.  Resilience of floodplain ecosystems in a semi-arid environment , 2010 .