Belowground bud banks of tallgrass prairie are insensitive to multi‐year, growing‐season drought

VanderWeide, Benjamin L.; Hartnett, David C.; Carter, Daniel L.

doi:10.1890/es14-00058.1

Cited by 26 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…The ratio of buds per shoot we observed in response to drought and grazing treatments agreed with previous reports. In previous work, we found that the number of buds per shoot did not change with drought or irrigation relative to ambient conditions (VanderWeide et al 2014). In a separate study, we found that grazing reduced the number of buds per shoot for grasses by 15-25 % in 3 of the 4 years observed (VanderWeide 2013).…”

Section: Mechanism Of Changes In Bud Densitymentioning

confidence: 72%

Belowground bud bank response to grazing under severe, short-term drought

VanderWeide

Hartnett

2015

Oecologia

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While the effects of drought and grazing are often studied separately, these disturbances co-occur in grasslands worldwide and interactively influence population, community, and ecosystem processes. The effects of drought and grazing on the belowground bud bank may dictate the trajectory of community recovery because new shoots arise from belowground buds after disturbance in perennial grasslands. We therefore investigated the separate and interactive effects of severe drought and grazing on the belowground bud bank and aboveground vegetation in the tallgrass prairie of northeast Kansas, USA. Contrary to our expectations, we observed changes in community structure and declines in species richness both above and below ground in response to drought and grazing. We also hypothesized that drought would reduce bud bank density of all taxonomic groups, but found that grass bud and shoot densities remained constant across all drought and grazing treatment combinations. While sedge and forb bud and shoot densities were reduced by drought, only sedge bud density declined to a greater extent when grazed under drought conditions. Live rhizome biomass did not vary by treatment and was highly correlated with bud bank density, suggesting that bud demography is tightly linked to the production and senescence of rhizomes. Despite the effects of drought and grazing on aboveground net primary productivity and community structure, our work suggests that grasses stabilize tallgrass prairie plant communities because their rhizomes and associated buds persist through co-occurring disturbances.

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Section: Mechanism Of Changes In Bud Densitymentioning

confidence: 72%

Belowground bud bank response to grazing under severe, short-term drought

VanderWeide

Hartnett

2015

Oecologia

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“…The strong drought responses observed here in the year of drought agree with the range of biomass responses reported in other grassland drought studies (Bloor & Bardgett, ; Frank et al., ), and may reflect the inability of buffering mechanisms to operate under the intense water stress associated with strong pulse drought events (De Boeck et al., ). Previous grassland studies have also reported fast biomass recovery after severe, one‐time drought events in humid and arid climates (Hoover et al., ; Mariotte et al., ; Yang et al., ); fast recovery is possible when soil moisture has been recharged after drought, as belowground plant meristems are highly resistant to drought (VanderWeide, Hartnett, & Carter, ; Volaire, Barkaoui, & Norton, ). In our study, fast recovery may have been enhanced by high carbohydrate reserves (Volaire et al., ) and relatively low plant mortality during drought.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

High land‐use intensity exacerbates shifts in grassland vegetation composition after severe experimental drought

Stämpfli

Bloor

Fischer

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

147

124

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Climate change projections anticipate increased frequency and intensity of drought stress, but grassland responses to severe droughts and their potential to recover are poorly understood. In many grasslands, high land-use intensity has enhanced productivity and promoted resource-acquisitive species at the expense of resource-conservative ones. Such changes in plant functional composition could affect the resistance to drought and the recovery after drought of grassland ecosystems with consequences for feed productivity resilience and environmental stewardship. In a 12-site precipitation exclusion experiment in upland grassland ecosystems across Switzerland, we imposed severe edaphic drought in plots under rainout shelters and compared them with plots under ambient conditions. We used soil water potentials to scale drought stress across sites. Impacts of precipitation exclusion and drought legacy effects were examined along a gradient of land-use intensity to determine how grasslands resisted to, and recovered after drought. In the year of precipitation exclusion, aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) in plots under rainout shelters was À15% to À56% lower than in control plots. Drought effects on ANPP increased with drought severity, specified as duration of topsoil water potential w < À100 kPa, irrespective of land-use intensity. In the year after drought, ANPP had completely recovered, but total species diversity had declined by À10%. Perennial species showed elevated mortality, but species richness of annuals showed a small increase due to enhanced recruitment. In general, the more resourceacquisitive grasses increased at the expense of the deeper-rooted forbs after drought, suggesting that community reorganization was driven by competition rather than plant mortality. The negative effects of precipitation exclusion on forbs increased with land-use intensity. Our study suggests a synergistic impact of land-use intensification and climate change on grassland vegetation composition, and implies that biomass recovery after drought may occur at the expense of biodiversity maintenance. K E Y W O R D S"Birch effect", climate change, ecosystem resilience, legacy effects, multisite experiment, nitrogen availability, plant traits, precipitation manipulation, seedling recruitment, seminatural grasslandThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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“…For example, high drought resistance and phenotypic plasticity (Petru et al, ) may enable reproduction even under limited precipitation. Additional mechanisms, such as seed banks (Vanderweide, Hartnett, & Carter, ) and large seed size (Metz & Tielbörger, ), buffer catastrophic years and detrimental effects of environmental variation on population growth. Recently, a novel evidence indicated that in these ecosystems along the duration gradient, an increase in community nutrient, primarily driven by species turnover, has been shown to enhance their resistance to long‐term stress (Luo et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A synthesis of ecosystem aboveground productivity and its process variables under simulated drought stress

et al. 2019

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1. Projected increases in drought duration and intensity under climate change considerably affect aboveground productivity (ANPP) and associated process variables (photosynthesis rates (P n ), stomatal conductance (g s ), soil respiration (Rs) and soil water content (SWC)).2. Although ANPP has been extensively studied across the ecosystems, there is a little consensus on how the spatiotemporal patterns of ANPP will be altered with increasing drought stress. Here, we present a global meta-analysis of ANPP and the four variables (610 observations from 78 studies) for drought duration, intensity and their combination.3. Forest-ANPP had stronger negative responses to long-term drought (34.44%; ≥4 years) than short-term drought (10.78%; ≤1 year) and decreased more in Mediterranean forests than in tropical forests. Decreases in P n and g s were strongest under long-term moderate drought. In the short term, Rs increased by 5.66% under light drought, but decreased by 14.12% and 28.43% under moderate and severe droughts. Grass-ANPP showed a nonlinear decrease with extended duration and the rate slowed. Within light to severe intensities, ANPP decreased linearly, but became stable under extreme condition. In the short term, ANPP reduced more seriously with increasing drought intensity (12.01%-30.34%). With aggravation of drought stress, the reductions in Rs and SWC increased. There was significant heterogeneity in grassland responses to drought stress. The greatest decreases in ANPP, P n and g s were observed in North America, and the reductions in Rs and SWC were greater in Western Europe. Shrub-ANPP showed stronger negative responses to long-term moderate drought (12.59%). P n and g s declined significantly with increasing drought intensity. Variations in Rs to drought duration, intensity and their combination were more complex, either showing positive or negative responses (dominated). 4.Synthesis. Forest-ANPP shows high sensitivity to long-term moderate drought, whereas grass-ANPP is more responsive to short-term drought. Compared to forests and grasslands, shrub-ANPP exhibits less sensitivity to droughts. Different responses of ecosystems were predominantly driven by physiological mechanisms or species differences in turnover time, community architecture and drought K E Y W O R D Saboveground net primary productivity, drought stress, meta-analysis, photosynthesis rates, soil respiration, soil water content, stomatal conductance | 2521Journal of Ecology GAO et Al.

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Belowground bud banks of tallgrass prairie are insensitive to multi‐year, growing‐season drought

Cited by 26 publications

References 49 publications

Belowground bud bank response to grazing under severe, short-term drought

Belowground bud bank response to grazing under severe, short-term drought

High land‐use intensity exacerbates shifts in grassland vegetation composition after severe experimental drought

A synthesis of ecosystem aboveground productivity and its process variables under simulated drought stress

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