Towards unifying precipitation-vegetation productivity relationships in terrestrial ecosystems

Vegetation productivity is the key process supporting all terrestrial ecosystem services. Predicting the trajectories of change in vegetation productivity against the backdrop of precipitation change is a key challenge. Here, with global satellite datasets of vegetation growth and in-situ observations of productivity at > 2000 sites, we show that using theory from microeconomics, we can successfully predict how vegetation productivity responds to short-term (inter-annual) and longer-term changes in precipitation. Asymmetric responses of productivity to inter-annual precipitation variability, as well as well-documented spatial patterns of productivity, precipitation-use efficiency, and precipitation sensitivity, are all well explained by this theory when precipitation is considered the limiting resource and vegetation productivity. Our results suggest that evaluating ecosystems from a microeconomics perspective can provide novel insights and improve our understanding of, and predictive ability regarding, how vegetation productivity and hence ecosystem carbon sinks may change in the future.