Increased sensitivity to climate change in disturbed ecosystems

Kröel‐Dulay, György; Ransijn, Johannes; Schmidt, Inger Kappel; Beier, Claus; Angelis, Paolo De; Dato, Giovanbattista de; Dukes, Jeffrey S.; Emmett, Bridget A.; Estiarte, Marc; Garadnai, János; Kongstad, J.; Kovács-Láng, E.; Larsen, Klaus Steenberg; Liberati, Dario; Ogaya, Romà; Riis-Nielsen, Torben; Smith, Andrew R.; Sowerby, Alwyn; Tietema, Albert; Peñuelas, Josep

doi:10.1038/ncomms7682

Cited by 117 publications

(131 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Sites were established in the United Kingdom (UK), The Netherlands (NL), Denmark (DK-B, DK-M), Hungary (HU), Spain (SP) and Italy (IT)14. Mean annual precipitation (MAP) and mean annual temperature (MAT) (Table 1) were used to calculate a modified Gaussen index (GI) of aridity for each site as GI = MAP/(2*MAT).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shrubland primary production and soil respiration diverge along European climate gradient

Reinsch

Koller

Sowerby

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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Above- and belowground carbon (C) stores of terrestrial ecosystems are vulnerable to environmental change. Ecosystem C balances in response to environmental changes have been quantified at individual sites, but the magnitudes and directions of these responses along environmental gradients remain uncertain. Here we show the responses of ecosystem C to 8–12 years of experimental drought and night-time warming across an aridity gradient spanning seven European shrublands using indices of C assimilation (aboveground net primary production: aNPP) and soil C efflux (soil respiration: Rs). The changes of aNPP and Rs in response to drought indicated that wet systems had an overall risk of increased loss of C but drier systems did not. Warming had no consistent effect on aNPP across the climate gradient, but suppressed Rs more at the drier sites. Our findings suggest that above- and belowground C fluxes can decouple, and provide no evidence of acclimation to environmental change at a decadal timescale. aNPP and Rs especially differed in their sensitivity to drought and warming, with belowground processes being more sensitive to environmental change.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shrubland primary production and soil respiration diverge along European climate gradient

Reinsch

Koller

Sowerby

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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“…Differential sensitivities among co-dominant trees to a climate extreme [73] can alter the age structure and successional status of the ecosystem if one co-dominant species experiences a mortality threshold and the other does not [74]. Such changes to age structure or the successional state of vegetation may then impact the sensitivity of the ecosystem to future extremes [75]. Changes to dominance hierarchies due to differential sensitivities may further impact ecosystem productivity via competitive releases of a co-dominant [76], and may generate longer term impacts to the composition of the community [9].…”

Section: Scaling Individual Plant Responses To the Population And Commentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating plant ecological responses to climate extremes from individual to ecosystem levels

Felton

Smith

2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

100

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Climate extremes will elicit responses from the individual to the ecosystem level. However, only recently have ecologists begun to synthetically assess responses to climate extremes across multiple levels of ecological organization. We review the literature to examine how plant responses vary and interact across levels of organization, focusing on how individual, population and community responses may inform ecosystem-level responses in herbaceous and forest plant communities. We report a high degree of variability at the individual level, and a consequential inconsistency in the translation of individual or population responses to directional changes in community- or ecosystem-level processes. The scaling of individual or population responses to community or ecosystem responses is often predicated upon the functional identity of the species in the community, in particular, the dominant species. Furthermore, the reported stability in plant community composition and functioning with respect to extremes is often driven by processes that operate at the community level, such as species niche partitioning and compensatory responses during or after the event. Future research efforts would benefit from assessing ecological responses across multiple levels of organization, as this will provide both a holistic and mechanistic understanding of ecosystem responses to increasing climatic variability. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events’.

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“…To overcome this common shortcoming, some recent climate manipulation field experiments include a historical control, in addition to the ambient control, which provides long-term average climatic conditions (Jentsch et al 2007, Beier et al 2012. Moderate ecophysiological responses of the three dominant species to the experimental treatments are in line with that neither total vegetation abundance nor species richness were affected by warming or drought treatment in this experiment either in the short-or long-term (averaged across the first 5 years or 11 years (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012) of manipulations, respectively; Kröel-Dulay et al 2015). This reflects the high resilience of the system.…”

Section: Effects Of Experimental Treatmentsmentioning

confidence: 56%

Plant ecophysiological responses to drought, nocturnal warming and variable climate in the Pannonian sand forest-steppe: results of a six-year climate manipulation experiment

2017

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The impacts of year-round nocturnal warming or late spring rain exclusion on three plant functional types were studied in a plot-scale climate simulation experiment in a semiarid sand forest-steppe of Central Hungary. Ecophysiological traits were followed through six years for the C3 bunch grass Festuca vaginata, the spreading C4 grass Cynodon dactylon and shrubsized root suckers of Populus alba. In general, experimental treatments had slighter effects than weather fluctuations yielding extremities did. Populus alba responded to nocturnal warming with developing slenderer leaves. Rain exclusion reduced leaf physiological activity or growth, but only during or just after the treatment, and in certain years. When assessing treatment and background climatic variation effects together, in spring, leaf area growth was consistently stimulated by increasing temperature, but decreased with longer rainless periods for P. alba and F. vaginata. Physiological responses in spring indicated low temperature limitation for C. dactylon, and both low and high temperature control for P. alba. Longer summer droughts reduced leaf gas exchange, particularly for F. vaginata with substantial drop in photochemical activity and chlorophyll content. These results suggest that shallow rooted C3 bunch grasses can be the most susceptible to climatic variation, thus their abundance is expected to decline in the Pannonian forest-steppe. In contrast, plants having deeper roots and clonal integration will probably be less affected by the projected warming and drying climate.C4 photosynthesis or southern geographical distribution may also be beneficial, thus, the abundance of such species is expected to diminish less or even increase.

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Increased sensitivity to climate change in disturbed ecosystems

Cited by 117 publications

References 40 publications

Shrubland primary production and soil respiration diverge along European climate gradient

Shrubland primary production and soil respiration diverge along European climate gradient

Integrating plant ecological responses to climate extremes from individual to ecosystem levels

Plant ecophysiological responses to drought, nocturnal warming and variable climate in the Pannonian sand forest-steppe: results of a six-year climate manipulation experiment

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