Abstract
Drought events could have profound influence on plant community structure and ecosystem function, and have subsequent impacts on community stability, but we know little about how different climate warming scenarios affect community resistance and resilience to drought. Combining a daytime and nighttime warming experiment in the temperate steppe of north China with a natural drought event during the study period, we tested how daytime and nighttime warming influences drought resistance and resilience. Our results showed that the semi-arid steppe in north China was resistant to both daytime and nighttime warming, but vulnerable to drought. Nighttime warming, but not daytime warming, enhanced community resistance to drought via stimulating carbon sequestration, whereas neither daytime nor nighttime warming affected community resilience to drought. Large decline in plant community cover, primarily caused by the reduction in the cover of dominant and rare species rather than subordinate species during drought, did not preclude rapid ecosystem recovery. These findings suggest that nighttime warming may facilitate ecosystem sustainability and highlight the need to assess the effects of climate extremes on ecosystem functions at finer temporal resolutions than based on diurnal mean temperature.
Highlights
Resilience after the drought events[21,22,23,24,25]
Using a daytime and nighttime warming experiment subjected to a severe natural drought event in a temperate steppe in Northern China, we test three hypotheses: 1) Daytime warming will increase drought resistance and resilience of community cover because of the increased rate of carbon assimilation, whereas nighttime warming will reduce them due to accelerated carbon loss through elevated respiration; 2) The plots with higher diversity would show greater drought resistance and resilience, in a pattern consistent with the insurance hypothesis; 3) Subordinate species may be more resistant to drought than dominant species, due to reduced competition from dominant species during drought
Our results showed that increased carbon sequestration via photosynthesis over-compensation[2] under nighttime warming enhanced drought resistance of plant community cover
Summary
Resilience after the drought events[21,22,23,24,25]. Considerable research effort has been devoted to exploring the underlying mechanisms that influence drought resistance and resilience in views of the importance for ecological stability, but a consensus understanding on the key drivers over drought resistance and resilience is still lacking. Biomass-dependent hypothesis suggests that drought resistance might be determined by plant biomass rather than diversity, with communities with large plant biomass exhibiting increased susceptibility to drought[24,29]. Using a daytime and nighttime warming experiment subjected to a severe natural drought event in a temperate steppe in Northern China, we test three hypotheses: 1) Daytime warming will increase drought resistance and resilience of community cover because of the increased rate of carbon assimilation, whereas nighttime warming will reduce them due to accelerated carbon loss through elevated respiration; 2) The plots with higher diversity would show greater drought resistance and resilience, in a pattern consistent with the insurance hypothesis; 3) Subordinate species may be more resistant to drought than dominant species, due to reduced competition from dominant species during drought. Our results supported the hypothesis 3, but refuted the hypotheses 1 and 2
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