INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF PLANT DIVERSITY ON SOIL THERMAL DIFFUSIVITY USING PHYSICS- INFORMED NEURAL NETWORKS

The influence of plant diversity on the stability of ecosystems is well-reported in the literature.However, the exact mechanisms responsible for this effect are still a topic of debate.Recently, soil temperature stability was proposed as one possible candidate for such a mechanism.To further evaluate this hypothesis, we investigate the relationship between plant diversity and the thermal diffusivity of the soil during the very dry and hot summer of 2018 in Central Europe.By leveraging Physics-Informed Neural Networks and a 30-minute resolution soil temperature dataset from the Jena Experiment, we find inverse relationship between plant diversity and the thermal diffusivity of the associated soil.With this, we provide support for the idea of plant diversity as a natural protection against climate-related ecosystem change.