Dataset Information

Alpine grassland plants grow earlier and faster but biomass remains unchanged over 35 years of climate change.

ABSTRACT: Satellite data indicate significant advancement in alpine spring phenology over decades of climate warming, but corresponding field evidence is scarce. It is also unknown whether this advancement results from an earlier shift of phenological events, or enhancement of plant growth under unchanged phenological pattern. By analyzing a 35-year dataset of seasonal biomass dynamics of a Tibetan alpine grassland, we show that climate change promoted both earlier phenology and faster growth, without changing annual biomass production. Biomass production increased in spring due to a warming-induced earlier onset of plant growth, but decreased in autumn due mainly to increased water stress. Plants grew faster but the fast-growing period shortened during the mid-growing season. These findings provide the first in situ evidence of long-term changes in growth patterns in alpine grassland plant communities, and suggest that earlier phenology and faster growth will jointly contribute to plant growth in a warming climate.

SUBMITTER: Wang H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7154776 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Alpine grassland plants grow earlier and faster but biomass remains unchanged over 35 years of climate change.

Wang Hao H Liu Huiying H Cao Guangmin G Ma Zhiyuan Z Li Yikang Y Zhang Fawei F Zhao Xia X Zhao Xinquan X Jiang Lin L Sanders Nathan J NJ Classen Aimée T AT He Jin-Sheng JS

Ecology letters 20200212 4

Satellite data indicate significant advancement in alpine spring phenology over decades of climate warming, but corresponding field evidence is scarce. It is also unknown whether this advancement results from an earlier shift of phenological events, or enhancement of plant growth under unchanged phenological pattern. By analyzing a 35-year dataset of seasonal biomass dynamics of a Tibetan alpine grassland, we show that climate change promoted both earlier phenology and faster growth, without cha ...[more]

PMID: 32052555

Similar Datasets

Project description:Alpine grassland is the main ecosystem on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). Degradation and restoration of alpine grassland are related to ecosystem function and production, livelihood, and wellbeing of local people. Although a large number of studies research degraded alpine grassland, there are debates about degradation patterns of alpine grassland in different areas and widely applicable ecological restoration schemes due to the huge area of the QTP. In this study, we used the meta-analysis method to synthesize 80 individual published studies which were conducted to examine aboveground and underground characteristics in non-degradation (ND), light degradation (LD), moderate degradation (MD), heavy degradation (HD), and extreme degradation (ED) of alpine grassland on the QTP. Results showed that aboveground biomass (AGB), belowground biomass (BGB), Shannon-Wiener index (H'), soil moisture (SM), soil organic carbon (SOC), soil total nitrogen (TN), and available nitrogen (AN) gradually decreased along the degradation gradient, whereas soil bulk density (BD) and soil pH gradually increased. In spite of a tendency to soil desertification, losses of other soil nutrients and reduction of enzymes, there was no linear relationship between the variations with degradation gradient. Moreover, the decreasing extent of TN was smaller in areas with higher precipitation and temperature, and the decreasing extent of AGB, SOC, and TN was larger in areas with a higher extent of corresponding variables in the stage of ND during alpine grassland degradation. These findings suggest that in areas with higher precipitation and temperature, reseeding and sward cleavage can be used for restoration on degraded alpine grassland. Fencing and fertilization can be used for alpine grassland restoration in areas with lower precipitation and temperature. Microbial enzymes should not be used to restore degraded alpine grassland on a large scale on the QTP without detailed investigation and analysis. Future studies should pay more attention to the effects of climate factors on degradation processes and specific ecological restoration strategies in different regions of the QTP.

Project description:The productivity of permanent temperate cut grasslands is mainly driven by weather, soil characteristics, botanical composition and management. To adapt management to climate change, adjusting the cutting dates to reflect earlier onset of growth and expansion of the vegetation period is particularly important. Simulations of cut grassland productivity under climate change scenarios demands management settings to be dynamically derived from actual plant development rather than using static values derived from current management operations. This is even more important in the alpine region, where the predicted temperature increase is twice as high as compared to the global or Northern Hemispheric average. For this purpose, we developed a dynamic management module that provides timing of cutting and manuring events when running the biogeochemical model LandscapeDNDC. We derived the dynamic management rules from long-term harvest measurements and monitoring data collected at pre-alpine grassland sites located in S-Germany and belonging to the TERENO monitoring network. We applied the management module for simulations of two grassland sites covering the period 2011-2100 and driven by scenarios that reflect the two representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 and evaluated yield developments of different management regimes. The management module was able to represent timing of current management operations in high agreement with several years of field observations (r² > 0.88). Even more, the shift of the first cutting dates scaled to a +1 °C temperature increase simulated with the climate change scenarios (-9.1 to -17.1 days) compared well to the shift recorded by the German Weather Service (DWD) in the study area from 1991-2016 (-9.4 to -14.0 days). In total, the shift in cutting dates and expansion of the growing season resulted in 1-2 additional cuts per year until 2100. Thereby, climate change increased yields of up to 6 % and 15 % in the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios with highest increases mainly found for dynamically adapted grassland management going along with increasing fertilization rates. In contrast, no or only minor yield increases were associated with simulations restricted to fertilization rates of 170 kg N ha-1 yr-1 as required by national legislations. Our study also shows that yields significantly decreased in drought years, when soil moisture is limiting plant growth but due to comparable high precipitation and water holding capacity of soils, this was observed mainly in the RCP 8.5 scenario in the last decades of the century.

Project description:Climate warming may be exacerbated if rising temperatures stimulate losses of soil carbon to the atmosphere. The direction and magnitude of this carbon-climate feedback are uncertain, largely due to lack of knowledge of the thermal adaptation of the physiology and composition of soil microbial communities. Here, we applied the macromolecular rate theory (MMRT) to describe the temperature response of the microbial decomposition of soil organic matter (SOM) in a natural long-term warming experiment in a geothermally active area in New Zealand. Our objective was to test whether microbial communities adapt to long-term warming with a shift in their composition and their temperature response that are consistent with evolutionary theory of trade-offs between enzyme structure and function. We characterized the microbial community composition (using metabarcoding) and the temperature response of microbial decomposition of SOM (using MMRT) of soils sampled along transects of increasing distance from a geothermally active zone comprising two biomes (a shrubland and a grassland) and sampled at two depths (0-50 and 50-100 mm), such that ambient soil temperature and soil carbon concentration varied widely and independently. We found that the different environments were hosting microbial communities with distinct compositions, with thermophile and thermotolerant genera increasing in relative abundance with increasing ambient temperature. However, the ambient temperature had no detectable influence on the MMRT parameters or the relative temperature sensitivity of decomposition (Q10 ). MMRT parameters were, however, strongly correlated with soil carbon concentration and carbon:nitrogen ratio. Our findings suggest that, while long-term warming selects for warm-adapted taxa, substrate quality and quantity exert a stronger influence than temperature in selecting for distinct thermal traits. The results have major implications for our understanding of the role of soil microbial processes in the long-term effects of climate warming on soil carbon dynamics and will help increase confidence in carbon-climate feedback projections.

Dataset Information

Alpine grassland plants grow earlier and faster but biomass remains unchanged over 35 years of climate change.

Publications

Alpine grassland plants grow earlier and faster but biomass remains unchanged over 35 years of climate change.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets