Over what time-scales does precipitation influence plant and ecosystem fluxes?

Precipitation and associated moisture availability impact plant and ecosystem carbon and water fluxes over multiple time-scales. For example, responses to rains that increase moisture availability are often governed by prior (antecedent) conditions. Thus, we have developed a stochastic antecedent modeling framework to address questions such as: How do past moisture conditions influence plant and ecosystem responses to current conditions? And, over what time-scales? The approach has yielded surprising results about time lags and precipitation/drought legacies. Such results are based on statistical analyses of observational time-series, and this talk will highlight ideas for experimental approaches to evaluating time-scales of influence.