Yanlan paper (with Natan) on global hydraulic trait estimation is now availabe in HESS Discussions!

In the paper, we present an approach to estimate ecosystem-scale plant hydraulic parameters (e.g. maximum xylem conductance, P50, stomatal parameters) using model-data fusion combining a plant hydraulic model and assimilation of LPDR vegetation optical depth and ALEXI evapotranspiration. Using the new trait maps, we further show that one can derive 'hydraulic functional types' - alternative clusters to PFTs. When the hydraulic functional type mean is used instead of a PFT-wide mean (as in typical land surface models), ET forward model estimates improve even for a relatively small number of HFTs. You can read (or comment on!) the full paper here.