Abstract
Background and aims
Primary productivity in the temperate steppe is assumed to be co-limited by nitrogen (N) and water availability, but empirical evidence is scarce. We examined the N and water limitation status of primary productivity from the species scale to community scale under the framework of resource co-limitation.
Methods
We compared the responses of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) at different ecological levels to factorial N and water addition in two years in a temperate steppe of northern China.
Results
Water addition significantly enhanced total ANPP by 46%, with stronger effects in the dry year. Total ANPP was sub-additively co-limited by N and water availability, being more sensitive to water addition than to N addition in the dry year and equally sensitive to both resources in the year with normal precipitation. The responses of total ANPP to resource additions were largely driven by the changes of grasses rather than the forbs. Species level ANPP showed conservative responses to resource additions.
Conclusions
Our results highlight the hierarchical patterns of limitation status in primary productivity at different biological organization levels in this temperate steppe. The sub-additive limitation by N and water in this ecosystem deserves more attention in modelling the dynamics of ecosystem carbon cycle under global change scenarios.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the staff of the Inner Mongolia Grassland Ecosystem Research Station (IMGERS) for supporting this study and Amber C. Churchill and Matthew Simmons for linguistic improvement. Comments and suggestions from Dr. Thomas W. Kuyper and three anonymous reviewers help improve the quality of this manuscript. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31470505 and 31770503), National Basic Research Program of China (2016YFC0500601 and 2015CB150802), Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB15010403), Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (2014174), and the Key Research Program from CAS (QYZDB-SSWDQC006).
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Lü, XT., Liu, ZY., Hu, YY. et al. Testing nitrogen and water co-limitation of primary productivity in a temperate steppe. Plant Soil 432, 119–127 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3791-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3791-6