Nighttime warming enhances drought resistance of plant communities in a temperate steppe.

ABSTRACT: Drought events could have profound influence on plant community structure and ecosystem function, and have subsequent impacts on community stability, but we know little about how different climate warming scenarios affect community resistance and resilience to drought. Combining a daytime and nighttime warming experiment in the temperate steppe of north China with a natural drought event during the study period, we tested how daytime and nighttime warming influences drought resistance and resilience. Our results showed that the semi-arid steppe in north China was resistant to both daytime and nighttime warming, but vulnerable to drought. Nighttime warming, but not daytime warming, enhanced community resistance to drought via stimulating carbon sequestration, whereas neither daytime nor nig

SUBMITTER: Yang Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4796875 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature