Regional differences in the response of California’s rangeland production to climate and future projection

Abstract

Abstract Rangelands support many important ecosystem services and are highly sensitive to climate change. Understanding temporal dynamics in rangeland gross primary production (GPP) and how it may change under projected future climate, including more frequent and severe droughts, is critical for ranching communities to cope with future changes. Herein, we examined how climate regulates the interannual variability of GPP in California’s diverse annual rangeland, based on the contemporary records of satellite derived GPP at 500 m resolution since 2001. We built Gradient Boosted Regression Tree models for 23 ecoregion subsections, relating annual GPP with 30 climatic variables, to disentangle the partial dependence of GPP on each climate variable. The machine learning results showed that GPP was most sensitive to growing season (GS) precipitation, with a reduction in GPP up to 200 g cm−2 yr−1 when GS precipitation decreased from 400 to 100 mm yr−1 in one of the driest subsections. We also found that years with more evenly distributed GS precipitation had higher GPP. Warmer winter minimum air temperature enhanced GPP in approximately two-thirds of the subsections. In contrast, average GS air temperatures showed a negative relationship with annual GPP. When the pre-trained models were forced by downscaled future climate projections, changes in the predicted rangeland productivity by mid- and end of century were more remarkable at the ecoregion subsection scale than at the state level. Our machine learning-based analysis highlights key regional differences in GPP vulnerability to climate and provides insights on the intertwining and potentially counteracting effects of seasonal temperature and precipitation regimes. This work demonstrates the potential of using remote sensing to enhance field-based rangeland monitoring and, combined with machine learning, to inform adaptive management and conservation within the context of weather extremes and climate change.