Rotational grazing promotes grassland aboveground plant biomass and its temporal stability under changing weather conditions on the Qinghai‐Tibetan plateau

Liu, Yu; Dong, Shikui; Gao, Qingzhu; Zhang, Yong; Liu, Shiliang; Ganjurjav, Hasbagan; Hu, Guozheng; Wang, Xuexia; Yan, Yulong; Wu, Hongbao; Gao, Xiaoxia; Li, Shuai; Zhang, Jing

doi:10.1002/ldr.3596

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 69 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Previous studies have indicated that perturbations affected community stability via several mechanisms, namely, species diversity, compensatory dynamics, mean-variance scaling and species dominance [6,53]. In our study, a positive relationship between species richness and community stability was noted.…”

Section: Effects Of Fertilization and Grazing On The Underlying Mechasupporting

confidence: 70%

“…However, Beck et al [52] found that moderate grazing promoted the community stability in California's largest serpentine grassland via limiting the infestation of exotic weeds and maintaining native plant communities. Also, Li et al [53] found that rotational grazing increased community stability as grazing improved community productivity and maintained the compensatory growth of the plants on the Qinghai Tibetan plateau ecosystem [53]. The differential responses of community stability to grazing recorded between our study and those by the Beck et al [52] and Li et al [53] could be due to differential grazing methods, climate regions, and vegetation types [49,52].…”

Section: Effects Of Fertilization and Grazing On Community Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 46%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Long-Term Enclosure Can Benefit Grassland Community Stability on the Loess Plateau of China

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fertilization and grazing are two common anthropogenic disturbances that can lead to unprecedented changes in biodiversity and ecological stability of grassland ecosystems. A few studies, however, have explored the effects of fertilization and grazing on community stability and the underlying mechanisms. We conducted a six-year field experiment to assess the influence of nitrogen (N) fertilization and grazing on the community stability in a long-term enclosure and grazing grassland ecosystems on the Loess Plateau. A structural equation modeling method was used to evaluate how fertilization and grazing altered community stability. Our results indicated that the community stability decreased in the enclosure and grazing grassland ecosystems with the addition of N. The community stability began to decline significantly at 4.68 and 9.36 N g m−2 year−1 for the grazing and enclosure grassland ecosystems, respectively. We also found that the addition of N reduced the community stability through decreasing species richness, but a long-term enclosure can alleviate its negative effect. Overall, species diversity can be a useful predictor of the stability of ecosystems confronted with disturbances. Also, our results showed that long-term enclosure was an effective grassland management practice to ensure community stability on the Loess Plateau of China.

show abstract

Section: Effects Of Fertilization and Grazing On The Underlying Mechasupporting

confidence: 70%

Section: Effects Of Fertilization and Grazing On Community Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 46%

Long-Term Enclosure Can Benefit Grassland Community Stability on the Loess Plateau of China

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Previous studies have examined the responses of temporal stability of plant community biomass to external perturbations such as climate warming (Ma et al, 2017), grazing (Li et al, 2020) and nitrogen deposition (Zhou et al, 2020). Second, while most previous studies on the temporal stability of plant community biomass of grasslands were examined only during the peak plant growth stage, our study covered the full plant growth period from the pre-growth to peak-growth stage, which can better reveal the stability of grassland community dynamics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant litter influences the temporal stability of plant community biomass in an alpine meadow by altering the stability and asynchrony of plant functional groups

Zeng

Zhou

et al. 2021

Functional Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

1. The stability of a plant community is defined as its ability to resist and be resilient to changes. Plant community stability can be driven by a range of external perturbations as well as by plant community traits. Plant litter traits (species or mass) are widely recognized drivers for plant community composition and diversity changes in grasslands. Yet, the effects of litter traits on the temporal stability of plant communities in natural grasslands are largely unknown.2. In this study, a field experiment was conducted at an alpine meadow on the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau to quantify the effects of litter from Elymus nutans, Kobresia setchwanensis and Ligularia virgaurea on the temporal stability of plant community biomass at five different mass levels (0, 100, 200, 400 and 600 g/m 2 ).The experiment was conducted over the period from the pre-growth to peakgrowth stage between 2017 and 2019, during which temporal stability of plant community biomass was assessed in relation to plant community characteristics.3. The effects of litter on temporal stability of plant community biomass were mainly driven by the litter mass rather than the litter species. A hump-shaped relationship between litter mass and temporal stability of plant community biomass was found, with the highest stability under intermediate litter mass treatment (200 g/m 2 ).A structural equation model identified that this response was driven by the indirect effects of litter mass on the temporal stability of the biomass of the dominant (forbs) and subdominant (grasses) functional groups in the community and the asynchrony of plant functional groups.4. The results of this study demonstrate that plant litter traits are important drivers for maintaining plant community stability in natural grasslands, highlighting the importance of grassland management decisions (e.g. grazing intensity) relating to the quantity and quality of litter accumulation.

show abstract

“…However, plant compensatory growth under livestock grazing was observed in the Eurasian steppe ecosystems that are dominated by C 3 grasses when the growing season was wet (Schönbach et al 2011). In alpine and subalpine regions where are cold and wet, such as the QTP where alpine meadow ecosystems occupy over 4.5 × 10 5 km 2 of the area (Miehe 2008), both clipping (Klein, Harte, and Zhao 2007) and livestock grazing (Zhu et al 2010;Li et al 2020a) caused plant compensatory growth. A meta-analysis suggests that plant compensatory growth, which is a primary mechanism that causes the enhancement of belowground biomass, is generally detected under moderate grazing intensity on the QTP (Sun et al 2019).…”

Section: Compensatory Growth Phenomenamentioning

confidence: 99%

Excessive plant compensatory growth: a potential endogenous driver of meadow degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Zhang

Ganjurjav

Dong

et al. 2020

Ecosyst Health Sustain

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Degradation of meadow ecosystems in the largest alpine region of the world, i.e., the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), is a crucial ecological issue that has ardently discussed in recent years. Many factors, such as livestock overgrazing, climate change and overpopulation of small mammals are treated as important factors that cause the degradation of meadow ecosystems in the QTP. However, there are few hypotheses focus on the potential role of plant compensatory growth on meadow degradation. We proposed a compensatory growth-related hypothesis to understand the potential degradation process of meadow ecosystems in the QTP. We discussed that there are two stages of meadow degradation, i.e. the beginning stage of meadow degradation that is triggered by high-strength overcompensation; and the intensification stage of meadow degradation, which are driven by external factors such as climate warming, small mammals and thawing of permafrost.The mechanism of meadow degradation driven by plant compensatory growth is the asynchronism of plant consumption and the availability of soil nutrients. Our hypothesis that plant compensatory growth drives meadow degradation under the overgrazing condition requires re-examination and modification by testing the balance between soil nutrient cycling rates and the strength of plant compensatory growth in alpine regions.

show abstract

Rotational grazing promotes grassland aboveground plant biomass and its temporal stability under changing weather conditions on the Qinghai‐Tibetan plateau

Cited by 23 publications

References 69 publications

Long-Term Enclosure Can Benefit Grassland Community Stability on the Loess Plateau of China

Long-Term Enclosure Can Benefit Grassland Community Stability on the Loess Plateau of China

Plant litter influences the temporal stability of plant community biomass in an alpine meadow by altering the stability and asynchrony of plant functional groups

Excessive plant compensatory growth: a potential endogenous driver of meadow degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About