Asymmetric responses of primary productivity to precipitation extremes: A synthesis of grassland precipitation manipulation experiments

Climatic changes are altering Earth's hydrological cycle, resulting in altered precipitation amounts, increased interannual variability of precipitation, and more frequent extreme precipitation events. These trends will likely continue into the future, having substantial impacts on net primary...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global change biology 2017-10, Vol.23 (10), p.4376-4385
Main Authors: Wilcox, Kevin R., Shi, Zheng, Gherardi, Laureano A., Lemoine, Nathan P., Koerner, Sally E., Hoover, David L., Bork, Edward, Byrne, Kerry M., Cahill, James, Collins, Scott L., Evans, Sarah, Gilgen, Anna K., Holub, Petr, Jiang, Lifen, Knapp, Alan K., LeCain, Daniel, Liang, Junyi, Garcia‐Palacios, Pablo, Peñuelas, Josep, Pockman, William T., Smith, Melinda D., Sun, Shanghua, White, Shannon R., Yahdjian, Laura, Zhu, Kai, Luo, Yiqi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
aboveground net primary productivity
Analytical methods
Annual variations
belowground net primary productivity
biomass allocation
Carbon sequestration
Case studies
Climate
Climate Change
Drought
Ecosystem
Ecosystem services
Ecosystems
Environmental changes
Environmental policy
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Experiments
Food production
Gradients
Grassland
Grasslands
Hydrologic cycle
Hydrological cycle
Land management
meta-analysis
Net Primary Productivity
Poaceae
Precipitation
Primary production
Productivity
Rain
Rainfall
root biomass
Sensitivity
Variability
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Summary:Climatic changes are altering Earth's hydrological cycle, resulting in altered precipitation amounts, increased interannual variability of precipitation, and more frequent extreme precipitation events. These trends will likely continue into the future, having substantial impacts on net primary productivity (NPP) and associated ecosystem services such as food production and carbon sequestration. Frequently, experimental manipulations of precipitation have linked altered precipitation regimes to changes in NPP. Yet, findings have been diverse and substantial uncertainty still surrounds generalities describing patterns of ecosystem sensitivity to altered precipitation. Additionally, we do not know whether previously observed correlations between NPP and precipitation remain accurate when precipitation changes become extreme. We synthesized results from 83 case studies of experimental precipitation manipulations in grasslands worldwide. We used meta‐analytical techniques to search for generalities and asymmetries of aboveground NPP (ANPP) and belowground NPP (BNPP) responses to both the direction and magnitude of precipitation change. Sensitivity (i.e., productivity response standardized by the amount of precipitation change) of BNPP was similar under precipitation additions and reductions, but ANPP was more sensitive to precipitation additions than reductions; this was especially evident in drier ecosystems. Additionally, overall relationships between the magnitude of productivity responses and the magnitude of precipitation change were saturating in form. The saturating form of this relationship was likely driven by ANPP responses to very extreme precipitation increases, although there were limited studies imposing extreme precipitation change, and there was considerable variation among experiments. This highlights the importance of incorporating gradients of manipulations, ranging from extreme drought to extreme precipitation increases into future climate change experiments. Additionally, policy and land management decisions related to global change scenarios should consider how ANPP and BNPP responses may differ, and that ecosystem responses to extreme events might not be predicted from relationships found under moderate environmental changes. Future changes in precipitation will strongly impact ecosystem functioning and services through changes in plant growth. Here, we synthesize 83 precipitation experiments to look at responses of above and belowground
ISSN:1354-1013
1365-2486
DOI:10.1111/gcb.13706