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High rainfall frequency promotes the dominance of biocrust under low annual rainfall

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Abstract

Aims

Global climate change may greatly alter the structure and stability of drylands, creating an urgent need to recover their functions and services. Biological soil crust (biocrust), an interface between the soil and atmosphere, plays a crucial role in ecohydrological processes, and thus in influencing the restoration dynamics of dryland ecosystems. Previous studies have generally investigated the influences of biocrust on ecohydrological processes as an exogenous factor. However, it remains unclear how biocrusts, as an integral part of many ecosystems (i.e., as a system state variable), will change under global climate change.

Methods

This study developed a new ecohydrological model with biocrust cover as a system state variable, and explored the response of dryland ecosystems to altered rainfall regimes.

Results

Biocrust cover responded with an inverted U-shaped curve relationship to increasing annual rainfall and linearly to increasing rainfall frequency. Vascular plant (grass and shrub) cover showed an increasing trend with increasing annual rainfall and a decreasing trend to increasing rainfall frequency. Therefore, biocrust usually dominated over vascular plants (i.e., high biocrust cover and low vascular plant cover) under low annual rainfall. Furthermore, an increasing rainfall frequency would amplify the range of environmental (rainfall) conditions dominated by biocrust from an annual rainfall 0–100 mm under a rainfall frequency of 0.025 day−1 to 0–500 mm under a rainfall frequency of 1 day−1.

Conclusions

This study developed a model framework to predict dryland dynamics for surfaces covered by biocrust under global climate change. We suggest that restoration efforts could target at biocrust-dominated state in deserts, especially in a (future) drier climate.

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks are owed to Professors Hans Lambers and David J. Eldridge, and other two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions to improve this manuscript. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 31700373, 31522013, 41530746), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (lzujbky-2018-it06) and CAS “Light of West China” Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shapotou Desert Research and Environment Station, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.320, Donggang West Road, Lanzhou, 730000, Gansu, China

    Rongliang Jia

  2. State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, No.222, Tianshui South Road, Lanzhou, 730000, Gansu, China

    Ning Chen & Changming Zhao

  3. Department of Environment Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Kailiang Yu

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Contributions

RLJ and NC designed the research. NC ran and calibrated the model. NC conducted statistical analyses of model outputs. RLJ and NC wrote the manuscript. NC and KLY interpreted the results. All the authors revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ning Chen.

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Responsible Editor: Hans Lambers.

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Jia, R., Chen, N., Yu, K. et al. High rainfall frequency promotes the dominance of biocrust under low annual rainfall. Plant Soil 435, 257–275 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-018-3880-6

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