Critical transitions in rainfall manipulation experiments on grasslands

As a result of climate and land‐use changes, grasslands have been subjected to intensifying drought regimes. Extreme droughts could interfere in the positive feedbacks between grasses and soil water content, pushing grasslands across critical thresholds of productivity and leading them to collapse. If this happens, systems may show hysteresis and costly management interventions might be necessary to restore predrought productivity. Thus, neglecting critical transitions may lead to mismanagement of grasslands and to irreversible loss of ecosystem services. Rainfall manipulation experiments constitute a powerful approach to investigate the risk of such critical transitions. However, experiments performed to date have rarely applied extreme droughts and have used resilience indices that disregard the existence of hysteresis. Here, we suggest how to incorporate critical transitions when designing rainfall manipulation experiments on grasslands and when measuring their resilience to drought. The ideas presented here have the potential to trigger a perspective shift among experimental researchers, into a new state where the existence of critical transitions will be discussed, experimentally tested, and largely considered when assessing and managing vegetation resilience to global changes.     

Asymmetric responses of primary productivity to precipitation extremes: A synthesis of grassland precipitation manipulation experiments

Climatic changes are altering Earth's hydrological cycle, resulting in altered precipitation amounts, increased interannual variability of precipitation, and more frequent extreme precipitation events. These trends will likely continue into the future, having substantial impacts on net primary productivity (NPP) and associated ecosystem services such as food production and carbon sequestration. Frequently, experimental manipulations of precipitation have linked altered precipitation regimes to changes in NPP. Yet, findings have been diverse and substantial uncertainty still surrounds generalities describing patterns of ecosystem sensitivity to altered precipitation. Additionally, we do not know whether previously observed correlations between NPP and precipitation remain accurate when precipitation changes become extreme. We synthesized results from 83 case studies of experimental precipitation manipulations in grasslands worldwide. We used meta‐analytical techniques to search for generalities and asymmetries of aboveground NPP (ANPP) and belowground NPP (BNPP) responses to both the direction and magnitude of precipitation change. Sensitivity (i.e., productivity response standardized by the amount of precipitation change) of BNPP was similar under precipitation additions and reductions, but ANPP was more sensitive to precipitation additions than reductions; this was especially evident in drier ecosystems. Additionally, overall relationships between the magnitude of productivity responses and the magnitude of precipitation change were saturating in form. The saturating form of this relationship was likely driven by ANPP responses to very extreme precipitation increases, although there were limited studies imposing extreme precipitation change, and there was considerable variation among experiments. This highlights the importance of incorporating gradients of manipulations, ranging from extreme drought to extreme precipitation increases into future climate change experiments. Additionally, policy and land management decisions related to global change scenarios should consider how ANPP and BNPP responses may differ, and that ecosystem responses to extreme events might not be predicted from relationships found under moderate environmental changes.     

Contingent productivity responses to more extreme rainfall regimes across a grassland biome

Climate models predict, and empirical evidence confirms, that more extreme precipitation regimes are occurring in tandem with warmer atmospheric temperatures. These more extreme rainfall patterns are characterized by increased event size separated by longer within season drought periods and represent novel climatic conditions whose consequences for different ecosystem types are largely unknown. Here, we present results from an experiment in which more extreme rainfall patterns were imposed in three native grassland sites in the Central Plains Region of North America, USA. Along this 600 km precipitation–productivity gradient, there was strong sensitivity of temperate grasslands to more extreme growing season rainfall regimes, with responses of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) contingent on mean soil water levels for different grassland types. At the mesic end of the gradient (tallgrass prairie), longer dry intervals between events led to extended periods of below-average soil water content, increased plant water stress and reduced ANPP by 18%. The opposite response occurred at the dry end (semiarid steppe), where a shift to fewer, but larger, events increased periods of above-average soil water content, reduced seasonal plant water stress and resulted in a 30% increase in ANPP. At an intermediate mixed grass prairie site with high plant species richness, ANPP was most sensitive to more extreme rainfall regimes (70% increase). These results highlight the inherent complexity in predicting how terrestrial ecosystems will respond to forecast novel climate conditions as well as the difficulties in extending inferences from single site experiments across biomes. Even with no change in annual precipitation amount, ANPP responses in a relatively uniform physiographic region differed in both magnitude and direction in response to within season changes in rainfall event size/frequency.     

Sensitivity of three grassland communities to simulated extreme temperature and rainfall events

Three grassland communities in New Zealand with differing climates and proportions of C3 and C4 species were subjected to one‐off extreme heating (eight hours at 52.5°C) and rainfall (the equivalent of 100 mm) events. A novel experimental technique using portable computer‐controlled chambers simulated the extreme heating events. The productive, moist C3/C4 community was the most sensitive to the extreme events in terms of short‐term community composition compared with a dry C3/C4 community or an exclusively C3 community. An extreme heating event caused the greatest change to plant community species abundance by favouring the expansion of C4 species relative to C3 species, shifting C4 species abundance from 43% up to 84% at the productive, moist site. This was observed both in the presence and absence of added water. In the absence of C4 species, heating reduced community productivity by over 60%. The short‐term shifts in the abundance of C3 and C4 species in response to the single extreme climatic events did not have persistent effects on community structure or on soil nitrogen one year later. There was no consistent relationship between diversity and stability of biomass production of these plant communities, and species functional identity was the most effective explanation for the observed shifts in biomass production. The presence of C4 species resulted in an increased stability of productivity after extreme climatic events, but resulted in greater overall shifts in community composition. The presence of C4 species may buffer grassland community productivity against an increased frequency of extreme heating events associated with future global climate change.     

Restoration ecology in the Anthropocene: learning from responses of tropical forests to extreme disturbance events

Extreme disturbance events denote another aspect of global environmental changes archetypal of the Anthropocene. These events of climatic or anthropic origin are challenging our perceived understanding about how forests respond to disturbance. I present a general framework of tropical forest responses to extreme disturbance events with specific examples from tropical dry forests. The linkage between level of disturbance severity and dominant mechanism of vegetation recovery is reflected on a variety of initial trajectories of forest succession. Accordingly, more realistic and cost‐effective restoration goals in many tropical forests likely consist in maintaining a mosaic of different successional trajectories while promoting landscape connectivity, rather than encouraging full‐ecosystem recovery to pre‐disturbance conditions. Incorporating extreme disturbance events into the global restoration ecology agenda will be essential to design well‐informed ecosystem management strategies in the coming decades.     

Decomposing multiple dimensions of stability in global change experiments

Ecological stability is the central framework to understand an ecosystem's ability to absorb or recover from environmental change. Recent modelling and conceptual work suggests that stability is a multidimensional construct comprising different response aspects. Using two freshwater mesocosm experiments as case studies, we show how the response to single perturbations can be decomposed in different stability aspects (resistance, resilience, recovery, temporal stability) for both ecosystem functions and community composition. We find that extended community recovery is tightly connected to a nearly complete recovery of the function (biomass production), whereas systems with incomplete recovery of the species composition ranged widely in their biomass compared to controls. Moreover, recovery was most complete when either resistance or resilience was high, the latter associated with low temporal stability around the recovery trend. In summary, no single aspect of stability was sufficient to reflect the overall stability of the system.     

Satellite sun‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence detects early response of winter wheat to heat stress in the Indian Indo‐Gangetic Plains

Extremely high temperatures represent one of the most severe abiotic stresses limiting crop productivity. However, understanding crop responses to heat stress is still limited considering the increases in both the frequency and severity of heat wave events under climate change. This limited understanding is partly due to the lack of studies or tools for the timely and accurate monitoring of crop responses to extreme heat over broad spatial scales. In this work, we use novel spaceborne data of sun‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), which is a new proxy for photosynthetic activity, along with traditional vegetation indices (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index NDVI and Enhanced Vegetation Index EVI) to investigate the impacts of heat stress on winter wheat in northwestern India, one of the world's major wheat production areas. In 2010, an abrupt rise in temperature that began in March adversely affected the productivity of wheat and caused yield losses of 6% compared to previous year. The yield predicted by satellite observations of SIF decreased by approximately 13.9%, compared to the 1.2% and 0.4% changes in NDVI and EVI, respectively. During early stage of this heat wave event in early March 2010, the SIF observations showed a significant reduction and earlier response, while NDVI and EVI showed no changes and could not capture the heat stress until late March. The spatial patterns of SIF anomalies closely tracked the temporal evolution of the heat stress over the study area. Furthermore, our results show that SIF can provide large‐scale, physiology‐related wheat stress response as indicated by the larger reduction in fluorescence yield (SIF_yield) than fraction of photosynthetically active radiation during the grain‐filling phase, which may have eventually led to the reduction in wheat yield in 2010. This study implies that satellite observations of SIF have great potential to detect heat stress conditions in wheat in a timely manner and assess their impacts on wheat yields at large scales.     

Tree resilience to drought increases in the Tibetan Plateau

Forests in the Tibetan Plateau are thought to be vulnerable to climate extremes, yet they also tend to exhibit resilience contributing to the maintenance of ecosystem services in and beyond the plateau. So far the spatiotemporal pattern in tree resilience in the Tibetan Plateau remains largely unquantified and the influence of specific factors on the resilience is poorly understood. Here, we study ring‐width data from 849 trees at 28 sites in the Tibetan Plateau with the aim to quantify tree resilience and determine their diving forces. Three extreme drought events in years 1969, 1979, and 1995 are detected from metrological records. Regional tree resistance to the three extreme droughts shows a decreasing trend with the proportion of trees having high resistance ranging from 71.9%, 55.2%, to 39.7%. Regional tree recovery is increasing with the proportion of trees having high recovery ranging from 28.3%, 52.2%, to 64.2%. The area with high resistance is contracting and that of high recovery is expanding. The spatiotemporal resistance and recovery are associated with moisture availability and diurnal temperature range, respectively. In addition, they are both associated with forest internal factor represented by growth consistence among trees. We conclude that juniper trees in the Tibetan Plateau have increased resilience to extreme droughts in the study period. We highlight pervasive resilience in juniper trees. The results have implications for predicting tree resilience and identifying areas vulnerable to future climate extremes.     

黄土高原中部针叶树与灌木径向生长对气候的响应差异

为揭示黄土高原中部不同树种径向生长对气候变化的响应及应对极端干旱能力的差异,构建延安任家台林场油松、狼牙刺和黄刺玫树轮宽度年表,利用帕默尔干旱指数(PDSI)定义极端干旱事件,计算干旱频率及强度;利用树轮宽度量化径向生长应对极端干旱事件的抵抗力(Rt)、恢复力(Rc)及恢复弹力(Rs)。结果表明,油松与5月平均气温和平均最高气温显著负相关,与9月平均最高气温显著正相关,与前一年11月降水和7月相对湿度显著正相关;狼牙刺与前一年9月平均气温,当年7月平均最高气温,8月平均气温和平均最高气温显著负相关;黄刺玫与7月平均气温和平均最高气温显著负相关;3个树种径向生长均与PDSI正相关。干旱程度加剧使树木抗旱性降低,导致油松、狼牙刺Rt和Rs减弱。树种间差异表现为,Rt:狼牙刺>油松,Rc:油松>狼牙刺>黄刺玫,Rt:黄刺玫>狼牙刺。     

Multiscale topoedaphic heterogeneity increases resilience and resistance of a dominant grassland species to extreme drought and climate change

It is argued that the inclusion of spatially heterogeneous environments in biodiversity reserves will be an effective means of encouraging ecosystem resilience and plant community conservation under climate change. However, the resilience and resistance of plant populations to global change, the specific life‐history traits involved and the spatial scale at which environmentally driven demographic variation is expressed remains largely unknown for most plant groups. Here we address these questions by reporting an empirical investigation into the impacts of an unprecedented 3‐year drought on the demography, population growth rates (λ) and biogeographical distribution of core populations of the perennial grassland species Austrostipa aristiglumis in semiarid Australia. We use life‐history analysis and periodic matrix population models to specifically test the hypothesis that patch‐ and habitat‐scale variation in vital life‐history parameters result in spatial differences in the resilience and resistance of A. aristiglumis populations to extreme drought. We show that the development of critical soil water deficits during drought resulted in collapse of adult A. aristiglumis populations (λ?1), rapid interhabitat phytosociological change and overall contraction towards mesic refugia where populations were both more resistant and resilient to perturbation. Population models, combined with climatic niche analysis, suggest that, even in core areas, a significant reduction in size and habitat range of A. aristiglumis populations is likely under climate change expected this century. Remarkably, however, we show that even minor topographic variation (0.2–3 m) can generate significant variation in demographic parameters that confer population‐level resilience and resistance to drought. Our findings support the hypothesis that extreme climatic events have the capacity to induce rapid, landscape‐level shifts in core plant populations, but that the protection of topographically heterogeneous environments, even at small spatial scales, may play a key role in conserving biodiversity under climate change in the coming century.     

Extreme climatic events and vegetation: the role of stabilizing processes

Current climatic trends involve both increasing temperatures and climatic variability, with extreme events becoming more frequent. Increasing concern on extreme climatic events has triggered research on vegetation shifts. However, evidences of vegetation shifts resulting from these events are still relatively rare. Empirical evidence supports the existence of stabilizing processes minimizing and counteracting the effects of these events, reinforcing community resilience. We propose a demographic framework to understand this inertia to change based on the balance between adult mortality induced by the event and enhanced recruitment or adult survival after the event. The stabilizing processes potentially contributing to this compensation include attenuation of the adult mortality caused by the event, due to site quality variability, to tolerance, phenotypic variability, and plasticity at population level, and to facilitative interactions. Mortality compensation may also occur by increasing future survival due to beneficial effect on growth and survival of the new conditions derived from global warming and increased climatic variability, to lowered competition resulting from reduced density in affected stands, or to antagonistic release when pathogens or predators are vulnerable to the event or the ongoing climatic conditions. Finally, mortality compensation may appear by enhanced recruitment due to release of competition with established vegetation, for instance as a consequence of gap openings after event‐caused mortality, or to the new conditions, which may be more favorable for seedling establishment, or to enhanced mutualistic interactions (pollination, dispersal). There are important challenges imposed by the need of long‐term studies, but a research agenda focused on potentially stabilizing processes is well suited to understand the variety of responses, including lack of sudden changes and community inertia that are frequently observed in vegetation under extreme events. This understanding is crucial for the establishment of sound management strategies and actions addressed to improve ecosystem resilience under climate change scenarios.     

2001-2018年中国-老挝交通走廊核心区植被稳定性对极端干旱的响应

中国-老挝交通走廊核心区干旱事件的频繁发生威胁着该区域生态系统的稳定性。基于Palmer干旱指数（PDSI）和增强型植被指数（EVI）数据量化了中老交通走廊核心区不同植被类型的稳定性（年均EVI与其标准差之比）及其对干旱的抵抗力（干旱期间植被结构和功能保持其原始水平的能力）和恢复力（植被恢复到干旱前水平的速度）。结果表明：（1）2001-2018年间,中老交通走廊核心区共发生5次极端干旱事件,出现极端干旱的年份有2005年、2010年、2015年、2016年和2017年,以上年份极端干旱面积占总面积的比例分别为13.37%、47.46%、10.41%、12.00%和3.05%;（2）不同植被类型对极端干旱的响应不同,中老交通走廊核心区内常绿阔叶林的稳定性显著高于其他植被类型,和其他植被类型相比,常绿阔叶林虽然暴露在干旱环境中的时间更长,但其具有更高的稳定性,在维持中老交通走廊核心区的生态系统稳定性上发挥着重要作用;（3）常绿阔叶林和木本稀树草原对极端干旱的抵抗力和恢复力显著高于混交林、草地和农田,研究区内各植被类型对极端干旱的抵抗力与温度和降水呈显著正相关关系。     

Drought and recovery effects on belowground respiration dynamics and the partitioning of recent carbon in managed and abandoned grassland

The supply of soil respiration with recent photoassimilates is an important and fast pathway for respiratory loss of carbon (C). To date it is unknown how drought and land‐use change interactively influence the dynamics of recent C in soil‐respired CO₂. In an in situ common‐garden experiment, we exposed soil‐vegetation monoliths from a managed and a nearby abandoned mountain grassland to an experimental drought. Based on two ¹³CO₂ pulse‐labelling campaigns, we traced recently assimilated C in soil respiration during drought, rewetting and early recovery. Independent of grassland management, drought reduced the absolute allocation of recent C to soil respiration. Rewetting triggered a respiration pulse, which was strongly fuelled by C assimilated during drought. In comparison to the managed grassland, the abandoned grassland partitioned more recent C to belowground respiration than to root C storage under ample water supply. Interestingly, this pattern was reversed under drought. We suggest that these different response patterns reflect strategies of the managed and the abandoned grassland to enhance their respective resilience to drought, by fostering their resistance and recovery respectively. We conclude that while severe drought can override the effects of abandonment of grassland management on the respiratory dynamics of recent C, abandonment alters strategies of belowground assimilate investment, with consequences for soil‐CO₂ fluxes during drought and drought‐recovery.     

Does diversity influence soil nitrate,light availability and productivity in the establishment phase of Australian temperate grassland reconstruction?

Summary The successful conservation and restoration of the temperate native grasslands of south‐eastern Australia is critical to reversing the decline in range and diversity of these threatened plant communities. Yet the goals of high native species diversity and weed management are difficult to achieve in grassland restoration projects. To increase our understanding of whether synergies exist between these goals (i.e. whether early introduction of a larger number of species might improve both outcomes in the reassembly of native grassland), we examined the relationships between plant species number, functional group number and resource use during the establishment phase of direct‐sown grassland. We did this by sowing a representative suite of species (at varying levels of species number and functional group number) into experimental plots and then measuring and analysing the extent to which the newly established assemblages captured available resources, i.e. used soil nitrate, absorbed light and produced biomass (vegetative cover). Statistically significant correlations were common between the predictor variables (species number, functional group number, percentage vegetative cover, plant number, presence of idiosyncratic (dominating) species) and responses (soil nitrate concentration, light reduction or ‘extinction’). Higher diversity was associated with lower soil nitrate, while percentage vegetative cover and the presence of idiosyncratic species best predicted light extinction. The relationship between diversity, and plant biomass (measured as vegetative cover) and plant number was positive in the first year of the study. The diversity/biomass relationship became negative in the second year due to the higher numbers and cover of ‘idiosyncratic’ species. The diversity/plant number relationship also became negative in the autumn of the second year and was reduced to a trend by the winter. We found that lower nitrate and increasing plant numbers and vegetative cover were most strongly linked to increasing species number in the early stages of this study. This suggests that introducing and maintaining high diversity early in a native grassland reassembly or enhancement project will improve the resistance (e.g. to weed) of these communities. At later stages of grassland development, this function may be provided by the more dominating idiosyncratic species. The maintenance of diversity, an important goal in its own right, will therefore necessitate managed disturbances to periodically reduce the vegetative dominance of idiosyncratic species, releasing resources for the diverse range of other species whose early introduction will have allowed them to persist in the soil seed bank or as suppressed rootstocks.     

Remote sensing estimation of gross primary productivity and its response to climate change in the upstream of Heihe River Basin

AimsQuantifying the gross primary productivity (GPP) of vegetation is of primary interest in studies of global carbon cycle. This study aims to optimize the MODIS GPP model for specific environments of a fragile waterhead ecosystem, by performing simulations of long-term (from 2001 to 2012) GPP with optimized MOD_17 model, and to analyze the response of GPP to the local climatic variations.Methods The original MODIS GPP products that underestimate GPP were validated against two years (2010-2011) of eddy covariance (EC) data at two sites (i.e. an alpine pasture site and a forest site, respectively) in the upstream of Heihe River Basin. Three comparative experiments were then conducted to analyze the effects of input parameters derived from three sources (i.e. meteorological, biome-specific, and fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (fPAR) parameters) on the model behavior. After refining the model-driven parameters, long-term GPPs of the study area were estimated using the optimized MOD_17 model, and the Least Absolute Deviation method was applied to analyze the partial correlations between interannual GPPs and climatic variables (temperature, precipitation and vapor pressure deficit (VPD)). Important findings The uncertainties in the original MODIS GPP products are attributable to biome-specific parameters, input data (e.g. meteorological and radiometry data) and vegetation maps. At the pasture site, the light use efficiency had the strongest impact on the GPP simulations. The refined fPAR calculated from the leaf area index (LAI) products of Global Land Surface Satellite (GLASS) greatly improved the GPP estimates, especially at the forest site. The GPPs from the optimized MOD_17 model well matched the EC data (R² = 0.90, root mean squared error (RMSE) = 1.114 g C·m^-2·d^-1 at the alpine pasture site; R² = 0.91, RMSE = 0.649 g C·m^-2·d^-1 at the forest site). The time series of GPPs displayed an up trend at an average rate of 9.58 g C·m^-2·a^-1 from 2001 to 2012. Examination of the partial correlations between interannual GPPs and climatic variables showed that the annual mean temperature and VPD generally had significant positive impacts on GPP, and the annual precipitation had a negative impact on GPP.     

黑河上游植被总初级生产力遥感估算及其对气候变化的响应

定量描述植被总初级生产力(GPP)对于全球碳循环和全球气候变化研究具有重要意义。针对MODIS MOD_17 GPP (MOD_17)产品在通量站点低估的现象, 通过3个实验依次改进了模型输入参数(气象数据和吸收的光合有效辐射吸收比例(fPAR))和模型本身的参数(最大光能利用率), 分析了各个参数对模拟结果的不确定性影响, 结果表明各参数对模拟结果都有不同程度的影响。在阿柔草地站, 最大光能利用率的重新标定对结果影响最大, GPP估算结果的提高最为明显; 在关滩森林站利用广义神经网络算法得到的GLASS fPAR代替原始MODIS fPAR产品, 比其他参数的改进效果更明显, GPP的值更接近涡动通量观测值。利用改进的MOD_17模型重新估算了黑河上游2001-2012年间植被GPP, 通过趋势分析得出该研究时段内GPP以9.58 g C·m^-2·a^-1的平均速率呈上升趋势。同时计算了气候因子(温度、降水和饱和水汽压差(VPD))与时间序列GPP的偏相关性, 分析了植被GPP对气候变化的响应情况, 2001-2012年平均温度和VPD与年GPP大部分区域呈正相关, 体现了温度和VPD对植被生长的促进作用; 2001-2012年的降水量与年GPP无明显相关, 且大部分区域呈负相关。     

The role of drought,disturbance, and seed dispersal in dominance shifts in a temperate grassland

Aims

More intense and frequent droughts predicted for the future will heavily affect grasslands worldwide and, along with various other disturbances, possibly trigger major vegetation shifts. Therefore, documenting these changes and understanding the mechanisms behind them is essential. Our study aimed to investigate how dominant species in a semiarid grassland respond to a combination of small-scale experimental disturbances and naturally occurring droughts and uncover the underlying mechanisms.

Location

Central Hungary.

Methods

We conducted a small-scale disturbance experiment in a semiarid temperate grassland and followed recovery for 18 years, including severe drought events. In 1999, we established 16 sites, eight dominated by Festuca vaginata and another eight by Stipa borysthenica, the two dominant species of sand grasslands in the region. At each site, three permanent plots were marked that received either a cutting or digging treatment or remained as controls. We monitored the cover and density changes of Festuca and Stipa annually.

Results

In the early years following the disturbance, Festuca recovered at a similar rate under both disturbance treatments, while Stipa recovered faster in cut than in dug plots. When natural drought events caused major diebacks of both species, Stipa recovered very quickly and regained dominance in initially Stipa-dominated plots, and it also took over in initially Festuca-dominated control and cut plots. However, digging at Festuca-dominated sites delayed drought-induced Stipa colonisation and thus favoured Festuca recovery. We found that the poor performance of Stipa in dug plots was related to sharply reduced seedling establishment, which resulted from the low number of seeds captured by the bare soil surface after digging.

Conclusions

Our results demonstrate that recurring drought events may induce dominance shifts in temperate grasslands, but small-scale disturbances can modulate vegetation responses. Our findings emphasise the importance of post-disturbance regeneration patterns in drought-induced vegetation shifts and show that seed dispersal strategy may have a major effect on vegetation dynamics.     

Contrasting resistance and resilience to extreme drought and late spring frost in five major European tree species

Extreme climate events (ECEs) such as severe droughts, heat waves, and late spring frosts are rare but exert a paramount role in shaping tree species distributions. The frequency of such ECEs is expected to increase with climate warming, threatening the sustainability of temperate forests. Here, we analyzed 2,844 tree‐ring width series of five dominant European tree species from 104 Swiss sites ranging from 400 to 2,200 m a.s.l. for the period 1930–2016. We found that (a) the broadleaved oak and beech are sensitive to late frosts that strongly reduce current year growth; however, tree growth is highly resilient and fully recovers within 2 years; (b) radial growth of the conifers larch and spruce is strongly and enduringly reduced by spring droughts—these species are the least resistant and resilient to droughts; (c) oak, silver fir, and to a lower extent beech, show higher resistance and resilience to spring droughts and seem therefore better adapted to the future climate. Our results allow a robust comparison of the tree growth responses to drought and spring frost across large climatic gradients and provide striking evidence that the growth of some of the most abundant and economically important European tree species will be increasingly limited by climate warming. These results could serve for supporting species selection to maintain the sustainability of forest ecosystem services under the expected increase in ECEs.     

北方农牧交错区农业生态系统生产力对气候波动的响应——以准格尔旗为例

气候变化对区域生态系统结构和功能有重大影响。以中国北方农牧交错区的准格尔旗为例,利用气象和《统计年鉴》数据,采用数理统计方法分析准格尔旗1961—2009年降水量、平均气温的波动特征,计算出该地区1961—2009年农业生态系统NPP值和主要农作物的气候产量,论述了准格尔旗农业生态系统生产力对气候波动的响应。结果表明:(1)降水量和平均气温的年际、年内波动均显著。(2)准格尔旗农业生态系统生产力呈现阶段性地波动上升趋势。排除社会、科技等影响,气候生产力对气候波动表现出较强的敏感性,是作物气候生态适应的结果。(3)中国北方雨养旱作区,粮食气候产量受降水量年际波动(特别是7、8月)显著影响;谷子、糜黍、玉米、薯类、大豆和油料等农作物的气候产量与降水量年际波动呈显著正相关;谷子、糜黍的气候产量与生长季降水量年内波动呈显著负相关。集水型生态农业是北方农牧交错区生态环境友好的农业发展模式。(4)谷子、糜黍、薯类、大豆和油料等农作物的气候产量与6、7、8月平均气温年际波动呈显著负相关;生长季平均气温年内波动对谷子、糜黍、大豆和油料等农作物的气候产量有显著负面影响。因此,需要综合采取工程、生物和农业措施,将气候变化对主要农作物气候产量的不利影响降到最低。