Responses of Ephemeral Plants to Precipitation Changes and Their Effects on Community in Central Asia Cold Desert.

ABSTRACT: In the context of global climate change, changes in precipitation patterns will have profound effects on desert plants, particularly on shallow-rooted plants, such as ephemeral plants. Therefore, we conducted an experiment on artificial control of precipitation for four dominant ephemeral plants, Erodium oxyrhinchum, Alyssum linifolium, Malcolmia scorpioides, and Hyalea pulchella, in the southern edge of Gurbantunggut Desert. We measured the importance value and some growth parameters of the four species under increased or decreased precipitation and constructed trait correlation networks for each of the four species. We also compared the response of increased or decreased precipitation to vegetation coverage. The results show that drought significantly reduced

SUBMITTER: Mu X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10421208 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature