Differential resistance and resilience of functional groups to livestock grazing maintain ecosystem stability in an alpine steppe on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Ganjurjav, Hasbagan; Zhang, Yong; Gornish, Elise S.; Hu, Guozheng; Li, Yue; Wan, Yunfan; Gao, Qingzhu

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109579

Cited by 39 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…We monitored plant productivity according to the cover, height, and the aboveground biomass of each species in each quadrat using the quadrat method. Evaluations were done at the peak of biomass accumulation in mid‐August from 2016 to 2019 (Ganjurjav et al, 2019). Each quadrant was divided into a grid of 100 squares of 5 cm × 5 cm each to estimate the percentage plant cover by visually counting the squares covered by each species.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The divergent impact of phenology change on the productivity of alpine grassland due to different timing of drought on the Tibetan Plateau

Gao

Ganjurjav

et al. 2021

Land Degrad Dev

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Droughts are predicted to become more frequent and persist for longer periods in the future, especially in alpine regions due to climate change. However, the association mechanism between plant productivity response to drought timing and phenology in the alpine grassland of the Tibetan Plateau is unclear. We conducted manipulative drought experiments on early growing season drought (ED) and middle growing season drought (MD) to determine the impacts of drought timing on the alpine grassland. The results showed ED significantly delayed the green‐up of the community vegetation (8.20%, p < .05). However, MD advanced the withered date of the community vegetation (−2.98%, p < .05). ED and MD depressed the growing season duration, cover, height, and the aboveground biomass of the community vegetation. However, the structural equation model revealed that the effect of phenology changes on the aboveground net primary production shifts was divergent among graminoid, weeds, and community. Our results shed light on the drought tolerance mechanisms of diverse vegetation groups at different drought timings. Thus, the drought timing should not be neglected in climate change studies, especially in research related to climate extremes.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The divergent impact of phenology change on the productivity of alpine grassland due to different timing of drought on the Tibetan Plateau

Gao

Ganjurjav

et al. 2021

Land Degrad Dev

Self Cite

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“…The species recorded in the plots were a priori classified into four functional groups: grass, sedge, annual forb, perennial forb. The classification of functional groups was based on the literature on the alpine grassland and other grasslands (Ganjurjav et al, 2019;Sternberg, Gutman, Perevolotsky, Ungar, & Kigel, 2000). The cover of each species was calculated as the number of hits on the species divided by the total number of hits (100), using stainless steel frame with string gridded 0.5 m Â 0.5 m quadrat of 10 Â 10 squares (each square was 5 Â 5 cm) that consists of 100 cross intersections to record hits on raised areas in the center of the mosaic crack patches.…”

Section: Experimental Design and Samplingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant community distribution induced by microtopography due to soil cracks developed in overgrazed alpine meadows on the Tibetan Plateau

et al. 2021

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Microtopographic variation is a common feature of natural ecosystems. On the Tibetan Plateau, this variation includes soil cracking that influences the dynamics of soil nutrients and seed trapping, which further affect species distributions. Despite their importance, cracks in alpine meadows have rarely been reported, and the effects of cracks on soil properties and plant distribution are poorly understood.Therefore, we investigated the effects of microtopography induced by cracking on the soil properties, seed trapping, and plant community composition of crack mosaics in alpine meadows. The study focused on healed cracks that can recover from winter cracking and have not yet become irreversibly degraded. The results showed that the number of seeds in the healed cracks was significantly greater than that in the raised areas, by 2.37-times. The soil chemical parameters in the healed cracks were significantly higher than those in the raised areas. There were also significant differences in the soil physical parameters between these two positions of the mosaic. Differences in species richness and importance values, and their dynamics (2013-2018), were correlated with these two spatial positions in the crack mosaics. Soil physical and chemical parameters together explained 71% of the plant community composition on the crack mosaics, and the interaction effect explained 52.4%. To some extent, crack mosaics composed of microtopography units favour the conservation of water and nutrients in the healed-crack portion of the mosaic. We propose that cutting kobresia lawns will facilitate the repair of ecological processes and initiate a natural recovery in overgrazed alpine meadows.

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“…Within the infrastructure systems robustness refers to the ability of a system to remain functioning under variable magnitudes of disruptions and pressures (Mens et al, 2011). Thus, it refers to the tolerance capacity of the system (Ganjurjav et al, 2019) and persistence characteristic of the system reflecting the engineering principle of resisting to disturbances (Chelleri, 2012). Notably, robustness and resilience are related characteristics if infrastructure performance continues its functioning after a disruption (Anderies et al, 2013;Meerow et al, 2016).…”

Section: B) Resilient Versus Robust Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Resilient Vital Infrastructure Systems: Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Research Agenda

Mehvar

Wijnberg

Borsje

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Infrastructure systems are inextricably tied to society by providing a variety of vital services. These systems play a fundamental role in reducing the vulnerability of communities and increasing their resilience to natural and human-induced hazards. While diverse definitions of the resilience engineering concept exist for the infrastructures, analysing resilience of these systems within cross sectoral and interdisciplinary perspectives remains limited and fragmented in research and practice. This review synthesizes and complements existing knowledge in designing resilient vital infrastructures with the aim to assist researchers and policy makers by identifying: (1) key conceptual tensions and challenges that arise when designing resilient infrastructure systems; (2) engineering and non-engineering based measures to enhance resilience of the vital infrastructures, including the best recent practices available; and (3) opportunities for future research in this field. Results from a systematic literature review combined with expert interviews are integrated into a conceptual framework in which infrastructures are defined as a conglomeration of interdependent social, ecological, and technical systems. Our results indicate that conceptual and practical challenges in designing resilient infrastructures continue to exist, hence these systems are still being built without taking resilience explicitly into account. A review of available measures and recent applications shows that these measures have not been widely applied in designing different systems. To advance our understanding of the resilience engineering concept for infrastructure systems, main pressing topics to address evolve around the: (i) integration of the combined social, ecological and technical resilience of infrastructure systems, focusing on cascading effects of failures and dependencies across these complex systems; and (ii) development of new technology to identify the factors that create different recovery characteristics for these socio-ecological-technical systems.

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Differential resistance and resilience of functional groups to livestock grazing maintain ecosystem stability in an alpine steppe on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Cited by 39 publications

References 34 publications

The divergent impact of phenology change on the productivity of alpine grassland due to different timing of drought on the Tibetan Plateau

The divergent impact of phenology change on the productivity of alpine grassland due to different timing of drought on the Tibetan Plateau

Plant community distribution induced by microtopography due to soil cracks developed in overgrazed alpine meadows on the Tibetan Plateau

Towards Resilient Vital Infrastructure Systems: Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Research Agenda

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