Environmental Research Letters, Journal Year: 2024, Volume and Issue: 19(12), P. 124018 - 124018

Published: Oct. 17, 2024

Abstract Vegetation roots play an essential role in regulating the hydrological cycle by removing water from subsurface and releasing it to atmosphere. However, present understanding of drivers ecosystem-scale root development their spatial variability globally is limited. This study investigates varying roles climate, landscape, vegetation on magnitude zone storage capacity ( S r ) worldwide, which defined as maximum volume moisture accessible roots. To this aim, we quantified evaluated 21 possible controls for 3612 river catchments worldwide using a random forest machine learning model. Our findings reveal climate primary, but spatially varying, driver ecosystem scale with landscape characteristics playing minor role. More specifically, found mean inter-storm duration most dominant control globally, followed temperature, precipitation, topographic slope. While duration, slope exhibit consistent relation between precipitation varies spatially. Based variability, classified two different regimes: driven energy The precipitation-driven regime exhibits positive up 3 mm mathvariant="normal">d − 1 , above flattens eventually becomes negative. energy-limited strictly negative . Using model based these three variables variable slope, generated global gridded dataset closely resembles other datasets characteristics. suggests that our parsimonious approach four available estimate has potential be readily easily integrated into parameterization land surface models. may enhance accuracy predictions land–atmosphere exchange fluxes extremes providing robust representation both temporal

Language: Английский