Abstract
This study characterized the morphological and photosynthetic responses of two wetland plant species when they were subject to 2–6°C fluctuations in growth temperature and ±50% of precipitation, in order to predict the evolution of natural wetlands in Sanjiang Plain of North-eastern China. We investigated the morphological and photosynthetic responses of two dominant and competitive boreal freshwater wetland plants in Northeastern China to manipulation of warming (ambient, +2.0°C, +4.0°C, +6.0°C) and altered precipitation (−50%, ambient, +50%) simultaneously by incubating the plants from seedling to senescence within climate-controlled environmental chambers. Post-harvest, secondary growth of C. angustifolia was observed to explore intergenerational effects. The results indicated that C. angustifolia demonstrated a greater acclimated capacity than G. spiculosa to respond to climate change due to higher resistance to temperature and precipitation manipulations. The accumulated effect on aboveground biomass of post-harvest secondary growth of C. angustifolia was significant. These results explain the expansion of C. angustifolia during last 40 years and indicate the further expansion in natural boreal wetlands under a warmer and wetter future. Stability of the natural surface water table is critical for the conservation and restoration of G. spiculosa populations reacting to encroachment stress from C. angustifolia expansion.
Highlights
Wetlands are among the most important terrestrial carbon pools and play an important role in global carbon cycling [1,2]
To quantify anticipated climate effects on boreal wetland ecosystem processes, field experiments simulating climate change have been undertaken in North America and northern Europe [2,5,9], and these studies suggested that both the performance of a specific plant and the compositions of plant communities will change in different directions and at different magnitudes as a response to warming and/or changes in the depth of the surface water table that usually connected with temperature and precipitation change
Morphological indicators Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) of morphological indicators showed that the interaction effects of temperature and precipitation on the height of C. angustifolia and G. spiculosa were both significant (F = 2.025, p = 0.044; F = 2.520, p = 0.033, respectively)
Summary
Wetlands are among the most important terrestrial carbon pools and play an important role in global carbon cycling [1,2]. To quantify anticipated climate effects on boreal wetland ecosystem processes, field experiments simulating climate change have been undertaken in North America and northern Europe [2,5,9], and these studies suggested that both the performance of a specific plant and the compositions of plant communities will change in different directions and at different magnitudes as a response to warming and/or changes in the depth of the surface water table that usually connected with temperature and precipitation change. The responses could be scaled up to the level of the ecosystem when the initial structure of the wetland and the environmental driving variables are well coupled
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