Whole ecosystem metabolic pulses following precipitation events

1. Ecosystem respiration varies substantially at short temporal intervals and identifying the role of coupled temperature- and precipitation-induced changes has been an ongoing challenge. To address this challenge we applied a metabolic ecological theory to identify pulses in ecosystem respiration following rain events. Using this metabolic framework, precipitation-induced pulses were described as a reduction in metabolic activation energy after individual precipitation events. 2. We used this approach to estimate the responses of 237 individual events recorded over 2 years at four eddy-covariance sites in southern AZ, USA. The sites varied in both community type (woody and grass dominated) and landscape position (riparian and upland). We used a nonlinear inversion procedure to identify both the parameters for the pre-event temperature sensitivity and the predicted response of the temperature sensitivity to precipitation. By examining multiple events we evaluated the consistency of pulses between sites and discriminated between hypotheses regarding landscape position, event distributions, and pre-event ecosystem metabolism rates. 3. Over the 5-day post-event period across all sites the mean precipitation effect was attributed to 6·1 g CO₂ m⁻² of carbon release, which represented a 21% increase in respiration over the pre-event steady state trajectory of carbon loss. Differences in vegetation community were associated with differences in the integrated magnitude of pulse responses, while differences in topographic position were associated with the initial peak pulse rate. In conjunction with the differences between sites, the individual total pulse response was positively related to the drying time interval and metabolic rates prior to the event. The quantitative theory presented provides an approach for understanding ecosystem pulse dynamics and helps characterized the dependence of ecosystem metabolism on both temperature and precipitation.