Non-growing/growing season non-uniform-warming increases precipitation use efficiency but reduces its temporal stability in an alpine meadow

Abstract

There are still uncertainties on the impacts of season-non-uniform-warming on plant precipitation use efficiency (PUE) and its temporal stability (PUEstability) in alpine areas. Here, we examined the changes of PUE and PUEstability under two scenes of non-growing/growing season non-uniform-warming (i.e., GLNG: growing-season-warming lower than non-growing-season-warming; GHNG: growing-season-warming higher than non-growing-season-warming) based on a five-year non-uniform-warming of non-growing/growing season experiment. The GLNG treatment increased PUE by 38.70% and reduced PUEstability by 50.47%, but the GHNG treatment did not change PUE and PUEstability. This finding was mainly due to the fact that the GLNG treatment had stronger influences on aboveground biomass (AGB), non-growing-season soil moisture (SMNG), temporal stability of AGB (AGBstability), temporal stability of non-growing-season air temperature (Ta_NG_stability), temporal stability of growing-season vapor pressure deficit (VPDG_stability) and temporal stability of start of growing-season (SGSstability). Therefore, the warming scene with a higher non-growing-season-warming can have greater influences on PUE and PUEstability than the warming scene with a higher growing-season-warming, and there were possibly trade-offs between plant PUE and PUEstability under season-non-uniform-warming scenes in the alpine meadow.

Asymmetric warming among elevations may homogenize plant α-diversity and aboveground net primary production of alpine grasslands

“…Second, climate change can significantly affect soil moisture (Wang and Fu, 2023) and asymmetric warming among elevations can homogenize temperature and water availability among elevations (Wang et al, 2021b). Ambient temperature and humidity conditions can influence plant phenology (Han et al, 2023), which are closely correlated with ANPP in alpine grasslands of the "Third Pole of the Earth" (Fu and Shen, 2022;Wang et al, 2022). Ambient temperature and humidity conditions can also impact plant net photosynthesis rate of the "Third Pole of the Earth" (Fu et al, 2015a).…”

“…Moreover, the effects of warming on plant production and α-diversity can be related to the background values of climatic conditions Fu and Sun, 2022), and climate conditions generally change with years (Wang et al, 2022;Han et al, 2022a;Wang and Fu, 2023). Third, the effects of warming on plant production and α-diversity can be also related to warming duration, and warming may have lagging effects on plant production and α-diversity (Fu et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2021a;Fu and Shen, 2022;Han et al, 2023). Fourthly, the effects of warming on plant production can be also related to its effects on plant precipitation use efficiency, which varied with years (Han et al, 2023).…”

“…Third, the effects of warming on plant production and α-diversity can be also related to warming duration, and warming may have lagging effects on plant production and α-diversity (Fu et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2021a;Fu and Shen, 2022;Han et al, 2023). Fourthly, the effects of warming on plant production can be also related to its effects on plant precipitation use efficiency, which varied with years (Han et al, 2023). Fifthly, the effects of warming on plant production and α-diversity can be also related to its effects on soil microbial community structure, which also varied with years (Yu et al, 2019a;.…”

“…First, previous studies have focused on the phenomenon itself of asymmetric warming among elevations and possible driving mechanisms (Rangwala and Miller, 2012) rather than the effects of asymmetric warming among elevations on ecosystem structure and function. Second, asymmetric warming generally includes daily asymmetric warming (Zhong and Fu, 2022), seasonal asymmetric warming (Fu et al, 2019;Fu and Shen, 2022;Han et al, 2023) and spatial asymmetric warming (Wang et al, 2021b(Wang et al, , 2022. Previous studies have primarily explored the impacts of daily and seasonal asymmetric warming on terrestrial ecosystems (Bokhorst et al, 2011;Tozzi et al, 2014;Ji et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2017;Fu et al, 2019;Fu and Shen, 2022;Zhong and Fu, 2022), but only a small number of studies have tried to probe the responses of terrestrial ecosystems to asymmetric warming among elevations (Wang et al, 2021b).…”

Temperature Mainly Determined the Seasonal Variations in Soil Faunal Communities in Semiarid Areas

“…In particular, in regions where seasonal changes in hydrothermal conditions are evident, the soil arthropod community changes dramatically during different seasons. In addition, seasonal variation in aboveground plant communities (different species compositions and resource inputs in different seasons) may result in seasonal variation in soil faunal communities [16,17]. The results of Wu et al showed that soil macrofauna were more sensitive to changes in habitat and vegetation, whereas soil mesofauna were more sensitive to seasonal changes [18].…”