Effects of grazing on leaf traits and ecosystem functioning in Inner Mongolia grasslands: scaling from species to community

作者：Shuxia Zheng, Haiyan Ren, Zhichun Lan, Wenshan Li, Yuanyin Bai · 年份：2009 · DOI：10.5194/bgd-6-9945-2009 · 被引用次数：11 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant and animal studies、Plant Parasitism and Resistance

Abstract. More attention has focused on using some easily measured plant functional traits to predict grazing influence on plant growth and ecosystem functioning. However, there has been much controversy on leaf traits response to grazing, thus more research should be conducted at the species level. Here we investigated the leaf area, leaf mass and specific leaf area (SLA) of 263 species in eight grassland communities along a soil moisture gradient in the Xilin River Basin, a semiarid grassland of northern China, to explore the grazing effects on ecosystem functioning. Results demonstrated that grazing decreased the leaf area and leaf mass in more than 56% of species in the Xilin River Basin, however, responses of SLA to grazing varied widely between species. Grazing increased SLA in 38.4% of species, decreased SLA in 31.3% of species and had no effect on 30.3% of species. Annuals and biennials generally developed high SLA as grazing tolerance traits, while perennial graminoids developed low SLA as grazing avoidance traits. Considering the water ecotypes, the SLA-increased and SLA-unchanged species were dominated by hygrophytes and mesophytes, while the SLA-decreased species were dominated by xerophytes. At the community level, grazing decreased the mean leaf area index (LAI) of six communities by 16.9%, leaf biomass by 35.2% and standing aboveground biomass (SAB) by 35.0% in the Xilin River Basin, indicating that overgrazing greatly decreased the ecosystem functioning in the...