Land use modulates resistance of grasslands against future climate and inter‐annual climate variability in a large field experiment

作者：Lotte Korell, Martin Andrzejak, Sigrid Berger, Walter Durka, Sylvia Haider, Isabell Hensen, Yva Herion, Johannes Höfner, Liana Kindermann, Stefan Klotz, Tiffany M. Knight, Anja Linstädter, Anna‐Maria Madaj, Ines Merbach, Stefan G. Michalski, Carolin Plos, Christiane Roscher, Martin Schädler, Erik Welk, Harald Auge · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1111/gcb.17418 · 被引用次数：30 · 研究领域：Pasture and Agricultural Systems、Plant Ecology and Soil Science、Rangeland and Wildlife Management

Climate and land-use change are key drivers of global change. Full-factorial field experiments in which both drivers are manipulated are essential to understand and predict their potentially interactive effects on the structure and functioning of grassland ecosystems. Here, we present 8 years of data on grassland dynamics from the Global Change Experimental Facility in Central Germany. On large experimental plots, temperature and seasonal patterns of precipitation are manipulated by superimposing regional climate model projections onto background climate variability. Climate manipulation is factorially crossed with agricultural land-use scenarios, including intensively used meadows and extensively used (i.e., low-intensity) meadows and pastures. Inter-annual variation of background climate during our study years was high, including three of the driest years on record for our region. The effects of this temporal variability far exceeded the effects of the experimentally imposed climate change on plant species diversity and productivity, especially in the intensively used grasslands sown with only a few grass cultivars. These changes in productivity and diversity in response to alterations in climate were due to immigrant species replacing the target forage cultivars. This shift from forage cultivars to immigrant species may impose additional economic costs in terms of a decreasing forage value and the need for more frequent management measures. In contrast, the extensively use...