Precipitation and temperature regulate species diversity, plant coverage and aboveground biomass through opposing mechanisms in large-scale grasslands.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Although the relationships between species diversity and aboveground biomass (AGB) are highly debated in grassland ecosystems, it is not well understood how climatic factors influence AGB directly and indirectly via plant coverage and species diversity in large-scale grasslands along a topographic gradient. In doing so, we hypothesized that climatic factors would regulate plant coverage, species diversity and AGB due to maintaining plant metabolic and ecological processes, but the relationship of plant coverage with AGB would be stronger than species diversity due to covering physical niche space.

Methods

To test the proposed hypothesis, we collected data for calculations of species richness, evenness, plant coverage and AGB across 123 grassland sites (i.

SUBMITTER: Yao Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9751382 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature