Abstract
Modern climate change presents unprecedented challenges, posing critical
crises that threaten sustainable development, human well-being, and
planetary health. A significant concern is the potential for global
warming to cause irreversible disruptions to the water-carbon cycle, a
topic that remains underexplored. This study seeks to address a crucial
knowledge gap by examining how increasing wet extremes impact ecosystem
productivity. The research agenda focuses on three primary questions: 1)
How do the intensity and duration of various wet extremes affect
evapotranspiration across different watersheds and terrestrial biomes?
2) How do immediate and legacy responses to wet extremes vary across
different biomes, and what insights do these temporal patterns provide
about the causal and predictive relationships between wet extreme and
evapotranspiration? 3) To what extent do watershed characteristics (such
as soil properties, hydrological conditions, and vegetation factors)
modulate the relationship between wet extremes and ecosystem
productivity? As climate change alters precipitation patterns,
understanding these complex ecosystem responses becomes crucial for
developing targeted watershed management strategies and informing
mitigation efforts to manage food and water resources more effectively.