Ecosystem responses to precipitation pulses (“pulse responses”) exert a large control over global carbon, water, and energy cycles. However, it is unclear how the timing and magnitude of pulse responses will vary across ecosystems as precipitation regimes shift under accelerating climate change. To address this issue, this study evaluates how plants and ecosystems respond to precipitation pulses and explores potential implicat...

Climate extremes—e.g., drought, atmospheric rivers, heat waves—are increasing in severity and frequency across the western United States of America (USA). Tree‐ring widths reflect the concurrent and legacy effects of such climate extremes, yet our ability to predict extreme tree growth is often poor. Could tree‐ring data themselves identify the most important climate variables driving extreme low‐ and high‐growth states? How d...

Climate and competition interact to affect species’ performance, such as growth and survival, and help determine species distributions and coexistence. However, it is unclear how climatic conditions modulate frequency‐dependent performance, that is, how performance changes as a species becomes locally rare or common. This is critical because declines in performance as a species becomes more common (negative frequency dependenc...