Increased Soil Frost Versus Summer Drought as Drivers of Plant Biomass Responses to Reduced Precipitation: Results from a Globally Coordinated Field Experiment |
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| Authors: | Hugh A. L. Henry Mehdi Abedi Concepción L. Alados Karen H. Beard Lauchlan H. Fraser Anke Jentsch Juergen Kreyling Andrew Kulmatiski Eric G. Lamb Wei Sun Mathew R. Vankoughnett Susanna Venn Christiane Werner Ilka Beil Irmgard Blindow Sven Dahlke Maren Dubbert Alexandra Effinger Heath W. Garris Maite Gartzia Tobias Gebauer Mohammed A. S. Arfin Khan Andrey V. Malyshev John Morgan Charles Nock Janelle P. Paulson Yolanda Pueyo Holly J. Stover Xuechen Yang |
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| Affiliation: | 1.Department of Biology,University of Western Ontario,London,Canada;2.Department of Range Management,Tarbiat Modares University,Tehran,Islamic Republic of Iran;3.Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (CSIC),Saragossa,Spain;4.Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center,Utah State University,Logan,USA;5.Department of Natural Resource Sciences,Thompson Rivers University,Kamloops,Canada;6.Disturbance Ecology, BayCEER,University of Bayreuth,Bayreuth,Germany;7.Department of Forestry and Environmental Science,Shahjalal University of Science and Technology,Sylhet,Bangladesh;8.Experimental Plant Ecology,Greifswald University,Greifswald,Germany;9.Department of Plant Sciences,University of Saskatchewan,Saskatoon,Canada;10.Institute of Grassland Science,Northeast Normal University,Changchun,China;11.Department of Biological Sciences,University of Wisconsin-Richland,Richland Center,USA;12.Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences,Deakin University,Burwood,Australia;13.Ecosystem Physiology,University of Freiburg,Breisgau,Germany;14.Geobotany, Faculty of Biology,University of Freiburg,Breisgau,Germany;15.Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, Research Centre for Applied Alpine Ecology,La Trobe University,Bundoora,Australia |
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| Abstract: | Reduced precipitation treatments often are used in field experiments to explore the effects of drought on plant productivity and species composition. However, in seasonally snow-covered regions reduced precipitation also reduces snow cover, which can increase soil frost depth, decrease minimum soil temperatures and increase soil freeze–thaw cycles. Therefore, in addition to the effects of reduced precipitation on plants via drought, freezing damage to overwintering plant tissues at or below the soil surface could further affect plant productivity and relative species abundances during the growing season. We examined the effects of both reduced rainfall (via rain-out shelters) and reduced snow cover (via snow removal) at 13 sites globally (primarily grasslands) within the framework of the International Drought Experiment, a coordinated distributed experiment. Plant cover was estimated at the species level, and aboveground biomass was quantified at the functional group level. Among sites, we observed a negative correlation between the snow removal effect on minimum soil temperature and plant biomass production the next growing season. Three sites exhibited significant rain-out shelter effects on plant productivity, but there was no correlation among sites between the rain-out shelter effect on minimum soil moisture and plant biomass. There was no interaction between snow removal and rain-out shelters for plant biomass, although these two factors only exhibited significant effects simultaneously for a single site. Overall, our results reveal that reduced snowfall, when it decreases minimum soil temperatures, can be an important component of the total effect of reduced precipitation on plant productivity. |
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