Observational evidence of legacy effects of the 2018 drought on a mixed deciduous forest in Germany

Abstract

Abstract Forests play a major role in the global carbon cycle, and droughts have been shown to explain much of the interannual variability in the terrestrial carbon sink capacity. The quantification of drought legacy effects on ecosystem carbon fluxes is a challenging task, and research on the ecosystem scale remains sparse. In this study we investigate the delayed response of an extreme drought event on the carbon cycle in the mixed deciduous forest site ’Hohes Holz’ (DE-HoH) located in Central Germany, using the measurements taken between 2015 and 2020. Our analysis demonstrates that the extreme drought and heat event in 2018 had strong legacy effects on the carbon cycle in 2019, but not in 2020. On an annual basis, net ecosystem productivity was $$\sim 16\,\%$$ ∼ 16 % higher in 2018 ( $$\sim 424\,{\hbox {g}_{\text {C}}}\hbox {m}^{-2}$$ ∼ 424 g C m - 2 ) and $$\sim 25\,\%$$ ∼ 25 % lower in 2019 ( $$\sim 274\,{\hbox {g}_{\text {C}}}\hbox {m}^{-2}$$ ∼ 274 g C m - 2 ) compared to pre-drought years ( $$\sim 367\,{\hbox {g}_{\text {C}}}\hbox {m}^{-2}$$ ∼ 367 g C m - 2 ). Using spline regression, we show that while current hydrometeorological conditions can explain forest productivity in 2020, they do not fully explain the decrease in productivity in 2019. Including long-term drought information in the statistical model reduces overestimation error of productivity in 2019 by nearly $$50\,\%$$ 50 % . We also found that short-term drought events have positive impacts on the carbon cycle at the beginning of the vegetation season, but negative impacts in later summer, while long-term drought events have generally negative impacts throughout the growing season. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of considering the diverse and complex impacts of extreme events on ecosystem fluxes, including the timing, temporal scale, and magnitude of the events, and the need to use consistent definitions of drought to clearly convey immediate and delayed responses.