Changes in rainfall distribution promote woody foliage production in the Sahel

Martin Brandt , Pierre Hiernaux , Kjeld Rasmussen , Compton Tucker (1) , Jean-Pierre Wigneron (2) , Abdoul Aziz Diouf , Stefanie Herrmann , Wenmin Zhang , Laurent Kergoat (3) , Cheikh Mbow (4) , Christin Abel , Yves Auda , Rasmus Fensholt

1 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
2 EPHYSE - Écologie fonctionnelle et physique de l'environnement
3 GET - Géosciences Environnement Toulouse
4 START International Inc

Dryland ecosystems comprise a balance between woody and herbaceous vegetation. Climate change impacts rainfall timing, which may alter the respective contributions of woody and herbaceous plants on the total vegetation production. Here, we apply 30 years of field-measured woody foliage and herbaceous mass from Senegal and document a faster increase in woody foliage mass (+17 kg ha−1 yr−1) as compared to herbaceous mass (+3 kg ha−1 yr−1). Annual rainfall trends were partitioned into core wet-season rains (+0.7 mm yr-1), supporting a weak but periodic (5-year cycles) increase in herbaceous mass, and early/late rains (+2.1 mm yr−1), explaining the strongly increased woody foliage mass. Satellite observations confirm these findings for the majority of the Sahel, with total herbaceous/woody foliage mass increases by 6%/20%. We conclude that the rainfall recovery in the Sahel does not benefit herbaceous vegetation to the same extent as woody vegetation, presumably favoured by increased early/late rains.

Mots clés: ecosystem ecology; climate-change ecology

Domaines: Interfaces continentales, environnement

Martin Brandt, Pierre Hiernaux, Kjeld Rasmussen, Compton Tucker, Jean-Pierre Wigneron, et al.. Changes in rainfall distribution promote woody foliage production in the Sahel. Communications Biology, 2019, 2 (1), pp.1-10. ⟨10.1038/s42003-019-0383-9⟩. ⟨hal-02344467⟩