Climate warming reduces the temporal stability of plant community biomass production.

ABSTRACT: Anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a critical environmental problem, prompting frequent investigations into its consequences for various ecological systems. Few studies, however, have explored the effect of climate change on ecological stability and the underlying mechanisms. We conduct a field experiment to assess the influence of warming and altered precipitation on the temporal stability of plant community biomass in an alpine grassland located on the Tibetan Plateau. We find that whereas precipitation alteration does not influence biomass temporal stability, warming lowers stability through reducing the degree of species asynchrony. Importantly, biomass temporal stability is not influenced by plant species diversity, but is largely determined by the temporal stability of domin

SUBMITTER: Ma Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5436222 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature