Grazing and global change factors differentially affect biodiversity‐ecosystem functioning relationships in grassland ecosystems

Miao He, Yuhan Pan, Guiyao Zhou, Kathryn E. Barry, Yuling Fu*, Xuhui Zhou*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Grazing and global change (e.g., warming, nitrogen deposition, and altered precipitation) both contribute to biodiversity loss and alter ecosystem structure and functioning. However, how grazing and global change interactively influence plant diversity and ecosystem productivity, and their relationship remains unclear at the global scale. Here, we synthesized 73 field studies to quantify the individual and/or interactive effects of grazing and global change factors on biodiversity-productivity relationship in grasslands. Our results showed that grazing significantly reduced plant richness by 3.7% and aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) by 29.1%, but increased belowground net primary productivity (BNPP) by 9.3%. Global change factors, however, decreased richness by 8.0% but increased ANPP and BNPP by 13.4% and 14.9%, respectively. Interestingly, the strength of the change in biodiversity in response to grazing was positively correlated with the strength of the change in BNPP. Yet, global change flipped these relationships from positive to negative even when combined with grazing. These results indicate that the impacts of global change factors are more dominant than grazing on the belowground biodiversity-productivity relationship, which is contrary to the pattern of aboveground one. Therefore, incorporating global change factors with herbivore grazing into Earth system models is necessary to accurately predict climate-grassland carbon cycle feedbacks in the Anthropocene.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5492-5504
Number of pages13
JournalGlobal Change Biology
Volume28
Issue number18
Early online date23 Jun 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors thank the Subject editor and four anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. We sincerely thank all the scientists whose data and work were included in this meta‐analysis. This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31930072, 31770559, 31600387), Postdoctoral Innovation Talents Program of China (grant no. BX20200133).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Keywords

  • N deposition
  • biodiversity conservation
  • carbon sequestration
  • changed precipitation
  • grassland stability
  • warming

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