Responses of plant diversity to precipitation change are strongest at local spatial scales and in drylands.

ABSTRACT: Mitigating and adapting to climate change requires an understanding of the magnitude and nature by which climate change will influence the diversity of plants across the world's ecosystems. Experiments can causally link precipitation change to plant diversity change, however, these experiments vary in their methods and in the diversity metrics reported, making synthesis elusive. Here, we explicitly account for a number of potentially confounding variables, including spatial grain, treatment magnitude and direction and background climatic conditions, to synthesize data across 72 precipitation manipulation experiments. We find that the effects of treatments with higher magnitude of precipitation manipulation on plant diversity are strongest at the smallest spatial scale, and in drier environ

SUBMITTER: Korell L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8093425 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature