The effect of rainfall amount and timing on annual  transpiration in a grazed savanna grassland

Räsänen, Matti; Aurela, Mika; Vakkari, Ville; Beukes, Johan P.; Tuovinen, Juha-Pekka; Van Zyl, Pieter G.; Josipovic, Miroslav; Siebert, Stefan J.; Laurila, Tuomas; Kulmala, Markku; Laakso, Lauri; Rinne, Janne; Oren, Ram; Katul, Gabriel

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5773-2022

Articles | Volume 26, issue 22

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 5773–5791, 2022

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5773-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 5773–5791, 2022

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5773-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 26, issue 22

Research article

16 Nov 2022

Research article | 16 Nov 2022

The effect of rainfall amount and timing on annual transpiration in a grazed savanna grassland

Matti Räsänen et al.

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5773-2022-supplement

Data sets

Dataset for "The effect of rainfall amount and timing on annual transpiration in a grazed savanna grassland" M. Räsänen, M. Aurela, V. Vakkari, P. Beukes, J.-P. Tuovinen, S. Siebert, P. Van Zyl, M. Josipovic, T. Laurila, M. Kulmala, L. Laakso, J. Rinne, R. Oren, and G. G. Katul https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11322464

Short summary

The productivity of semiarid grazed grasslands is linked to the variation in rainfall and transpiration. By combining carbon dioxide and water flux measurements, we show that the annual transpiration is nearly constant during wet years while grasses react quickly to dry spells and drought, which reduce transpiration. The planning of annual grazing strategies could consider the early-season rainfall frequency that was linked to the portion of annual transpiration.