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Impact of tropospheric ozone on the Euro‐Mediterranean vegetation
Author(s) -
ANAV A.,
MENUT L.,
KHVOROSTYANOV D.,
VİOVY N.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
global change biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.146
H-Index - 255
eISSN - 1365-2486
pISSN - 1354-1013
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02387.x
Subject(s) - tropospheric ozone , environmental science , vegetation (pathology) , ozone , leaf area index , atmospheric sciences , troposphere , mediterranean climate , primary production , climatology , atmosphere (unit) , ecosystem , meteorology , agronomy , ecology , geography , geology , biology , medicine , pathology
The impact of ozone (O 3 ) on European vegetation is largely under‐investigated, despite huge areas of Europe are exposed to high O 3 levels and which are expected to increase in the next future. We studied the potential effects of O 3 on photosynthesis and leaf area index (LAI) as well as the feedback between vegetation and atmospheric chemistry using a land surface model (ORCHIDEE) at high spatial resolution (30 km) coupled with a chemistry transport model (CHIMERE) for the whole year 2002. Our results show that the effect of tropospheric O 3 on vegetation leads to a reduction in yearly gross primary production (GPP) of about 22% and a reduction in LAI of 15–20%. Larger impacts have been found during summer, when O 3 reaches higher concentrations. During these months the maximum GPP decrease is up to 4 g C m −2 day −1 , and the maximum LAI reduction is up to 0.7 m 2 m −2 . Since CHIMERE uses the LAI computed by ORCHIDEE to estimate the biogenic emissions, a LAI reduction may have severe implications on the simulated atmospheric chemistry. We found a large change in O 3 precursors that however leads to small changes in tropospheric O 3 concentration, while larger changes have been found for surface NO 2 concentrations.