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Productivity of Leymus chinensis grassland is co-limited by water and nitrogen and resilient to climate change

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Abstract

Aims

Changes in both rainfall patterns and nitrogen (N) deposition affect plant productivity. However, the knowledge of the interactions between reduced rainfall amount, reduced rainfall frequency, and increased atmospheric N deposition in grasslands is limited.

Methods

A three-factorial mesocosm experiment was conducted with monocultures of Leymus chinensis (Trin.) Tzvel. Treatments of rainfall amount (control, −30%), rainfall frequency (control, −50%) and N (0, 10 g N m−2 yr−1) were included.

Results

In the Songnen grassland, the aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) of L. chinensis increased by 137% with N addition, decreased by 22% with reduced rainfall amount and increased by 74% with reduced rainfall frequency. Rainfall amount, but not frequency, had significant interaction with N treatment. The combined treatment of N addition and reduced rainfall amount increased ANPP by 46%. The shoot density was decreased by 35% with reduced rainfall amount, but increased by 45% with reduced rainfall frequency and by 67% with N addition. Nitrogen addition increased net carbon assimilation rate and water use efficiency (WUE), but they showed no significant response to main factors of altered rainfall changes except the increased WUE under reduced rainfall amount.

Conclusions

Shoot density rather than shoot biomass of L. Chinensis, is the key factor affecting ANPP in response to changes in rainfall pattern and N deposition, and ANPP was co-limited by water and N. The Songnen grassland will be resilient in ANPP in future climate change scenarios, because deeper water infiltration following reduced rainfall frequency can offset the reduced ANPP caused by reduced rainfall. This offset will be further enhanced by the higher WUE caused by increased atmospheric N deposition.

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Acknowledgements

The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31971505), the Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province (YDZJ2021ZYTS081), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2412021ZD009, 2412020QD022), the Youth Talent Support Project of Jilin Province (QT202007), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M690030), the Science and Technology Project of the Jilin Provincial Education Department (JJKH20221169KJ) and the Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (B16011). We are grateful for the help of Yumeng Li for polishing the manuscript’s language, and Mr. Yu Zheng, Mr. Guangyin Li, Ms. Xiaoxia Xi, Ms. Ming Cao, and Ms. Mengxing Liu in the field, and Mr. Shicheng Jiang, Ms. Xiuquan Yue and Ms. Ya’nan Li in the lab. The China Scholarship Council funded the PhD scholarship to Yujie Shi.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Grassland Science, Key Laboratory of Vegetation Ecology of the Ministry of Education, Jilin Songnen Grassland Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, 130024, People’s Republic of China

    Yujie Shi, Yunna Ao, Baixin Sun, Jinwei Zhang, Zhihan Guo, Xianming De, Jiayu Han, Yuheng Yang, Xiaoyu Jiang, Chunsheng Mu & Junfeng Wang

  2. Department of Health and Environmental Sciences, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China

    Johannes M. H. Knops

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  1. Yujie Shi
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Correspondence to Junfeng Wang.

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Shi, Y., Ao, Y., Sun, B. et al. Productivity of Leymus chinensis grassland is co-limited by water and nitrogen and resilient to climate change. Plant Soil 474, 411–422 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-022-05344-1

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