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Consequences of Changing Precipitation Patterns for Ecosystem Functioning in Grasslands: A Review

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Progress in Botany

Part of the book series: Progress in Botany ((BOTANY,volume 76))

Abstract

Grassland ecosystems worldwide provide agricultural goods and important ecosystem services. Productivity and other ecosystem processes in grasslands are, in most cases, strongly linked to the ecosystems’ water status, a factor that is predicted to experience major alterations with global climate change. Future predictions include changes in the amount, distribution, frequency, and intensity of precipitation, which, particularly in grasslands, may have important consequences for ecosystem state and functioning. This review analyses the effects of experimental precipitation manipulation on plant productivity, species diversity, soil/ecosystem respiration, and soil nitrogen in grassland-type ecosystems over a wide range of climate types, synthesising the results from 72 studies.

We found that sensitivity of ecosystem processes to changes in precipitation amounts increased with aridity. In addition, ecosystem processes were more responsive to precipitation addition than to precipitation reduction. However, we did observe high resilience of grassland ecosystems to both changing precipitation amounts and variability, which may be explained by the fact that the applied manipulation scenarios often lie within the range of the natural inter-annual precipitation variability experienced by ecosystems, and by evolutionary adaptation of grassland ecosystems to these natural inter-annual differences. Long-term effects of altered precipitation regimes on ecosystem processes, i.e. by changes in species composition and soil properties, are rarely covered within the time frame of most studies and thus cannot be ruled out as a possible consequence of a gradually changing climate.

Increasing the comparability between individual precipitation manipulation studies is needed to facilitate the evaluation of ecosystem responses to altered precipitation regimes. We recommend future precipitation manipulation studies to aim at capturing possible long-term effects with comparable designs and standardised data compilation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Christine Hellmann for help and advice with the PLRS, and Peter Fay and Scott Collins for helpful suggestions on the manuscript. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia), through a postdoctoral fellowship to Marjan Jongen (SFRH/BPD/79662/2011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Experimental and Systems Ecology, University of Bielefeld, Universitätsstr. 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany

    Stephan Unger

  2. Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017, Lisboa, Portugal

    Marjan Jongen

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Correspondence to Stephan Unger .

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  1. TU Darmstadt FB Biologie, Darmstadt, Germany

    Ulrich Lüttge

  2. Universität Bielefeld W4-105 Lehrstuhl Experimentelle Ökologie, Bielefeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Wolfram Beyschlag

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Unger, S., Jongen, M. (2015). Consequences of Changing Precipitation Patterns for Ecosystem Functioning in Grasslands: A Review. In: Lüttge, U., Beyschlag, W. (eds) Progress in Botany. Progress in Botany, vol 76. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08807-5_14

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