Multivariate Conditional Granger Causality Analysis for Lagged Response of Soil Respiration in a Temperate Forest

Ecological multivariate systems offer a suitable data set on which to apply recent advances in information theory and causality detection. These systems are driven by the interplay of various environmental factors: meteorological and hydrological forcing, which are often correlated with each other at different time lags; and biological factors, primary producers and decomposers with both autonomous and coupled dynamics. Here, using conditional spectral Granger causality, we quantify directional causalities in a complex atmosphere-plant-soil system involving the carbon cycle. Granger causality is a statistical approach, originating in econometrics, used to identify the presence of linear causal interactions between time series of data, based on prediction theory. We first test to see if there was a significant difference in the causal structure among two treatments where carbon allocation to roots was interrupted by girdling. We then expanded the analysis, introducing radiation and soil moisture. The results showed a complex pattern of multilevel interactions, with some of these interactions depending upon the number of variables in the system. However, no significant differences emerged in the causal structure of above and below ground carbon cycle among the two treatments.

[1]  Thomas Foken,et al.  New Equations For Sonic Temperature Variance And Buoyancy Heat Flux With An Omnidirectional Sonic Anemometer , 2001 .

[2]  Andreas Richter,et al.  No diurnal variation in rate or carbon isotope composition of soil respiration in a boreal forest. , 2007, Tree physiology.

[3]  M. Bradford,et al.  Global patterns in belowground communities. , 2009, Ecology letters.

[4]  A. Seth,et al.  Granger causality and transfer entropy are equivalent for Gaussian variables. , 2009, Physical review letters.

[5]  Mingzhou Ding,et al.  Estimating Granger causality from fourier and wavelet transforms of time series data. , 2007, Physical review letters.

[6]  J. Kaye,et al.  Carbon and nitrogen cycling immediately following bark beetle outbreaks in southwestern ponderosa pine forests , 2008 .

[7]  B O B B,et al.  Estimating diurnal to annual ecosystem parameters by synthesis of a carbon flux model with eddy covariance net ecosystem exchange observations , 2005 .

[8]  T. A. Black,et al.  Assessing Tower Flux Footprint Climatology and Scaling Between Remotely Sensed and Eddy Covariance Measurements , 2009 .

[9]  K. Schindlerova,et al.  Equivalence of Granger Causalityand Transfer Entropy: A Generalization. , 2011 .

[10]  G. Wilson.  The Factorization of Matricial Spectral Densities , 1972 .

[11]  C. Werner,et al.  Diel variations in the carbon isotope composition of respired CO(2) and associated carbon sources: a review of dynamics and mechanisms , 2011 .

[12]  S. Bressler,et al.  Frequency decomposition of conditional Granger causality and application to multivariate neural field potential data , 2006, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[13]  Gil Bohrer,et al.  Sustained carbon uptake and storage following moderate disturbance in a Great Lakes forest. , 2013, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[14]  K. L. Nielsen,et al.  Estimating respiration of roots in soil: Interactions with soil CO2, soil temperature and soil water content , 1997, Plant and Soil.

[15]  Gil Bohrer,et al.  A comparison of multiple phenology data sources for estimating seasonal transitions in deciduous forest carbon exchange , 2011 .

[16]  Gil Bohrer,et al.  Exploring the Effects of Microscale Structural Heterogeneity of Forest Canopies Using Large-Eddy Simulations , 2009 .

[17]  C. Gough,et al.  Contribution of atmospheric nitrogen deposition to net primary productivity in a northern hardwood forest , 2009 .

[18]  Jianwu Tang,et al.  Tree photosynthesis modulates soil respiration on a diurnal time scale , 2005 .

[19]  Beverly E. Law,et al.  High-frequency analysis of the complex linkage between soil CO2 fluxes, photosynthesis and environmental variables , 2012 .

[20]  Michael G. Ryan,et al.  Interpreting, measuring, and modeling soil respiration , 2005 .

[21]  Praveen Kumar,et al.  Ecohydrologic process networks: 2. Analysis and characterization , 2009 .

[22]  Ranga B. Myneni,et al.  Identifying Climatic Controls on Ring Width: The Timing of Correlations between Tree Rings and NDVI , 2008 .

[23]  Dmitry A Smirnov,et al.  From Granger causality to long-term causality: application to climatic data. , 2009, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[24]  K. Hibbard,et al.  An analysis of soil respiration across northern hemisphere temperate ecosystems , 2005 .

[25]  G. Katul,et al.  Soil moisture and vegetation controls on evapotranspiration in a heterogeneous Mediterranean ecosystem on Sardinia, Italy , 2006 .

[26]  Corinne Le Quéré,et al.  Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[27]  John Finnigan,et al.  Coordinate Systems and Flux Bias Error , 2004 .

[28]  W. Massman.  A simple method for estimating frequency response corrections for eddy covariance systems , 2000 .

[29]  P. Masani.  Wiener's contributions to generalized harmonic analysis, prediction theory and filter theory , 1966 .

[30]  Daniel M. Kashian,et al.  Effects of biotic disturbances on forest carbon cycling in the United States and Canada , 2012 .

[31]  J. Geweke,et al.  Measurement of Linear Dependence and Feedback between Multiple Time Series , 1982 .

[32]  K. Griffin,et al.  The autotrophic contribution to soil respiration in a northern temperate deciduous forest and its response to stand disturbance , 2011, Oecologia.

[33]  Praveen Kumar,et al.  Information Driven Ecohydrologic Self-Organization , 2010, Entropy.

[34]  Brani Vidakovic,et al.  Multiscale analysis of vegetation surface fluxes: from seconds to years , 2001 .

[35]  T. Schreiber,et al.  Surrogate time series , 1999, chao-dyn/9909037.

[36]  Jehn-Yih Juang,et al.  Are ecosystem carbon inputs and outputs coupled at short time scales? A case study from adjacent pine and hardwood forests using impulse-response analysis. , 2007, Plant, cell & environment.

[37]  J. Kaimal,et al.  Another look at sonic thermometry , 1991 .

[38]  Ben Bond-Lamberty,et al.  Temperature-associated increases in the global soil respiration record , 2010, Nature.

[39]  Yakov Kuzyakov,et al.  REVIEW: Time lag between photosynthesis and carbon dioxide efflux from soil: a review of mechanisms and controls , 2010 .

[40]  Frans T. M. Nieuwstadt,et al.  Temperature measurement with a sonic anemometer and its application to heat and moisture fluxes , 1983 .

[41]  C. Weston,et al.  Temporal dynamics of the carbon isotope composition in a Pinus sylvestris stand: from newly assimilated organic carbon to respired carbon dioxide , 2008, Oecologia.

[42]  C. Granger.  Some recent development in a concept of causality , 1988 .

[43]  Markus Reichstein,et al.  On the choice of the driving temperature for eddy-covariance carbon dioxide flux partitioning , 2012 .

[44]  G. Katul,et al.  Simplified expressions for adjusting higher-order turbulent statistics obtained from open path gas analyzers , 2007 .

[45]  H. Schmid,et al.  Respiratory carbon losses and the carbon-use efficiency of a northern hardwood forest, 1999-2003. , 2005, The New phytologist.

[46]  K. Wilson,et al.  A spectral analysis of biosphere-atmosphere trace gas flux densities and meteorological variables across hour to multi-year time scales , 2000 .

[47]  B. Elberling.  Seasonal trends of soil CO2 dynamics in a soil subject to freezing , 2003 .

[48]  Renduo Zhang,et al.  Effects of High Soil Water Content and Temperature on Soil Respiration , 2011 .

[49]  T. Vesala,et al.  On the separation of net ecosystem exchange into assimilation and ecosystem respiration: review and improved algorithm , 2005 .

[50]  B. Shipley.  Cause and correlation in biology , 2000 .

[51]  H. E. Jobson.  Evaporation Into the Atmosphere: Theory, History, and Applications , 1982 .

[52]  Clive W. J. Granger,et al.  Some recent developments in a concept of causality , 2001 .

[53]  D. Johnson,et al.  The effects of stem girdling on biogeochemical cycles within a mixed deciduous forest in eastern Tennessee , 2004, Oecologia.

[54]  G. Bohrer,et al.  Disturbance and the resilience of coupled carbon and nitrogen cycling in a north temperate forest , 2011 .

[55]  N. Edwards,et al.  The effects of stem girdling on biogeochemical cycles within a mixed deciduous forest in eastern Tennessee , 2004, Oecologia.

[56]  T. Vesala,et al.  Towards a standardized processing of Net Ecosystem Exchange measured with eddy covariance technique: algorithms and uncertainty estimation , 2006 .

[57]  Matteo Detto,et al.  Causality and Persistence in Ecological Systems: A Nonparametric Spectral Granger Causality Approach , 2012, The American Naturalist.

[58]  Yang Zhang,et al.  Changes in belowground carbon in Acacia crassicarpa and Eucalyptus urophylla plantations after tree girdling , 2009, Plant and Soil.

[59]  N. Buchmann,et al.  Large-scale forest girdling shows that current photosynthesis drives soil respiration , 2001, Nature.

[60]  Maurizio Mencuccini,et al.  The significance of phloem transport for the speed with which canopy photosynthesis and belowground respiration are linked. , 2010, The New phytologist.

[61]  Matteo Detto,et al.  Gross ecosystem photosynthesis causes a diurnal pattern in methane emission from rice , 2012 .

[62]  Robert K. Kaufmann,et al.  Investigating soil moisture feedbacks on precipitation with tests of Granger causality , 2002 .

[63]  E. K. Webb,et al.  Correction of flux measurements for density effects due to heat and water vapour transfer , 1980 .

[64]  H. Tian,et al.  The Power of Monitoring Stations and a CO2 Fertilization Effect: Evidence from Causal Relationships between NDVI and Carbon Dioxide , 2008 .

[65]  Andres Schmidt,et al.  High-frequency analysis of the complex linkage between soil CO(2) fluxes, photosynthesis and environmental variables. , 2012, Tree physiology.

[66]  J. Melillo,et al.  Soil warming, carbon–nitrogen interactions, and forest carbon budgets , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[67]  P. Masani.  RECENT TRENDS IN MULTIVARIATE PREDICTION THEORY , 1966 .

[68]  R. Valentini,et al.  A new assessment of European forests carbon exchanges by eddy fluxes and artificial neural network spatialization , 2003 .

[69]  K. Hlavácková-Schindler,et al.  Causality detection based on information-theoretic approaches in time series analysis , 2007 .

[70]  C. Granger.  Investigating causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods , 1969 .

[71]  Wilfried Brutsaert,et al.  Evaporation into the atmosphere : theory, history, and applications , 1982 .

[72]  Hans Peter Schmid,et al.  Ecosystem‐atmosphere exchange of carbon dioxide over a mixed hardwood forest in northern lower Michigan , 2003 .

[73]  Brady S. Hardiman,et al.  Canopy-structure effects on surface roughness parameters: Observations in a Great Lakes mixed-deciduous forest , 2013 .

[74]  G. Bohrer,et al.  The role of canopy structural complexity in wood net primary production of a maturing northern deciduous forest. , 2011, Ecology.