Abstract
Changes in precipitation regimes and wind velocity tend to alter structure and composition of the annual herb plant community, with consequent effects on ecological functioning and biodiversity maintenance. We examined the effects of increased precipitation and reduced wind velocity on annual herb plant community characteristics via a manipulative experiment from the middle of April to middle of August, 2016. There was significant increment in species richness with increased precipitation from June to August, and there were interactive effects between increased precipitation and reduced wind velocity especially in June and the end of July. From June to August, increased precipitation, reduced wind velocity as well as their interaction stimulated sandy plant community development. There was considerable elevation in plant coverage with increased precipitation, and also there was an interactive effect of increased precipitation with 20% reduced wind velocity. However, reduced wind velocity caused more significant stimulation (p < .01) in plant height. Moreover, dominant plants, Salsola collina, Bassia dasyphylla, and Setaria viridis, contributed equally to the elevated community coverage with increased precipitation, whereas S. collina occupied a much larger proportion on the augment of community height compared with the other two species under the increased precipitation and reduced wind velocity. Elevated Shannon–Wiener index was detected with increased precipitation in June and July. Furthermore, increased precipitation and reduced wind velocity enhanced aboveground and belowground biomass, respectively. These species traits‐in structuring and composing plant community were suggested to be conducive to deep understanding the plant functioning and dynamics under global changing precipitation regimes and atmospheric wind velocity scenarios.
Highlights
Anthropogenic has intensified the globally and regionally environ‐ mental changes, including the increased precipitation frequency and intensity, as well as the extreme precipitation events (IPCC, 2007, 2013), with no spatial or temporal consistency (Walther et al, 2002; Fay, Carlisle, Knapp, Blair, & Collins, 2000)
Some research‐ ers have illustrated that changing climatic factors could interact or superpose to impact plant biomass (Kardol et al, 2010; Shaw et al, 2002), correspondingly, we found that the interaction between precipitation and wind velocity stimulated plant aboveground biomass in our experiment
We found that water availabil‐ ity had a larger impact on aboveground biomass compared with the atmospheric wind, and the precipitation did not interact with atmospheric wind to universally accumulate biomass
Summary
Anthropogenic has intensified the globally and regionally environ‐ mental changes, including the increased precipitation frequency and intensity, as well as the extreme precipitation events (IPCC, 2007, 2013), with no spatial or temporal consistency (Walther et al, 2002; Fay, Carlisle, Knapp, Blair, & Collins, 2000). The occurrence of changing precipitation and wind activity speed is not unusual in arid and semiarid regions These two factors were determinants of herbaceous plant community that could alter plant productivity and correlate with ecosystems functioning. We investigated the effects of increased precipitation and reduced wind velocity on annual herb plant community structure and composition, in order to understand how the two factors and the interaction of those impact annual herb plant community characteris‐ tic, as well as how the species traits‐coverage, density, height, species diversity indexes, and ground biomass respond to the changing envi‐ ronment in the semiarid sandy grassland. We comprehensively pro‐ posed two hypotheses: (a) the increased precipitation and reduced wind velocity can stimulate the annual herb plant development (b) the interaction of both the two factors on plants community character‐ istics will be more complicated, possibly caused the larger changes in the annual herb plant community structure and composition
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