Inferring plant acclimation and improving model generalizability with
differentiable physics-informed machine learning of photosynthesis
Abstract
Net photosynthesis (AN) is a major component of the global carbon
cycle, with significant feedback to decadal-scale climate change.
Although plant acclimation to environmental changes can modify AN,
traditional vegetation models in Earth System Models (ESMs) often rely
on plant functional type (PFT)-specific parameter calibrations or
simplified acclimation assumptions, both of which lacked
generalizability across time, space and PFTs. In this study, we propose
a differentiable photosynthesis model to learn the environmental
dependencies of Vc,max25, as this genre of hybrid physics-informed
machine learning can seamlessly train neural networks and process-based
equations together. Compared to PFT-specific parameterization of
Vc,max25, learning the environment dependencies of key
photosynthetic parameters improves model spatiotemporal
generalizability. Applying environmental acclimation to Vc,max25 led
to substantial variation in global mean AN, calling for the
attention to acclimation in ESMs. The model effectively captured
multivariate observations (Vcmax25, stomatal conductance gs, and
AN) simultaneously and, in fact, multivariate constraints further
improved model generalization across space and PFTs. It also learned
sensible acclimation relationships of Vc,max25 to different
environmental conditions. The model explained more than 54%, 57% and
62% of the variance of AN, gs, and Vcmax25, respectively,
presenting a first global-scale spatial test benchmark of AN and
gs. These results highlight the potential of differentiable modeling
to enhanced process-based modules in ESMs and effectively leverage
information from large, multivariate datasets.