Potential of the remotely-derived products in monitoring ecosystem water use efficiency across grasslands in Northern China

ABSTRACTWater use efficiency (WUE) has been recognized as a crucial parameter to describe the interrelationship between carbon and water cycling. Quantitative assessment to spatiotemporal dynamics of ecosystem WUE in grasslands is of vital importance, given the large proportion of grasslands on the Earth’s land surface. Through continuous eddy covariance (EC) measurements at seven grassland sites in Northern China, this study examined the seasonal and interannual variations of gross primary production (GPP), evapotranspiration (ET) and WUE across four typical grassland ecosystems along a water availability gradient. The highest WUE occurred at the alpine meadow ecosystem with 1.45 g C kg−1 H2O, followed by the temperate meadow steppe and the typical steppe. The desert steppe had the lowest WUE with 0.53 g C kg−1 H2O. In addition, the remotely-derived WUE estimates from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Breathing Earth System Simulator (BESS) GPP and ET products, were used t...