Resistance and resilience of a semi-arid grassland to multi-year extreme drought

Abstract

Globally, extreme droughts are likely to become more frequent, more intense, and longer in duration with climate change. Understanding the impacts of drought on ecosystem function (i.e., resistance) and its recovery after drought (i.e., resilience) is critical for long-term sustainability of ecosystem services under climate change. We tested the effects of drought duration on ecosystem resistance by imposing four years of extreme drought (<5th percentile), and examined resilience by imposing two years of extreme drought followed by two years of recovery in a semi-arid grassland in Inner Mongolia, China. We found that the resistance of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) decreased as the drought progressed, i.e., ANPP was reduced from 33% in the first treatment year and 60% in the fourth treatment year. Resilience of the ecosystem was such that ANPP of drought plots was 83% of ambient plots one year post-drought. By the second year, ANPP of the drought plots fully recovered to ambient plot levels. Decreasing drought resistance through time was largely driven by forb reductions. High resilience of the system was due to grasses compensating for reductions in forb productivity. Based on these findings, we suggest that droughts may have progressively larger impacts as their duration increases, so single year responses may underpredict the effects of longer droughts likely to occur in the future. Additionally, longer recovery times after extreme drought events may be critical to ensure resilience and recovery of all plant functional types. Overall, we suggest that management should strive to support and maintain the high proportion of high drought resistance and resilience plant functional types in the community may enhance the stability of biomass production in a future climate with longer and more intense extreme droughts.