Different responses of soil water to warming controlled by evapotranspiration during grassland degradation: A case study in the typical steppe of China

作者：Huang Jing, Kesi Liu, Pengpeng Dou, Qian Gao, Cheng Liu, Jinshan Du, Zhengzhou Miao, Zhuoran Ren, Kun Wang · 发表于：Ecological Indicators · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1016/j.ecolind.2024.112718 · 被引用次数：9 · 研究领域：Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics、Soil and Unsaturated Flow、Tree-ring climate responses

• Grassland degradation affects evapotranspiration mainly through influencing transpiration. • The effect of warming on evapotranspiration gradually increases with the degree of grassland degradation. • Grassland degradation alters soil water by modifying evapotranspiration. • Soil water exhibits varying responses to warming influenced by evapotranspiration components. Worldwide grasslands are experiencing degradation due to overgrazing and the effects of climate change, and warming-induced changes in degraded grasslands could accelerate degradation. As one of the direct manipulating factors of grassland degradation, soil water is governed by climatological and anthropogenic processes. Evapotranspiration (ET) plays a key role in regulating soil water content in these processes, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, a two-year field experiment was conducted in different degraded grasslands. The calibrated Hydrus-1D model was applied to identified the dynamic of ET and soil water in 2022 and 2023 under normal condition and warming (+1.5 °C) scenarios. ET decreased slightly with grassland degradation, mainly due to the reduction of transpiration (T). T/ET decreased as well, 57.87 %∼69.06 %, 51.71 %∼65.60 %, 31.76 %∼49.44 % and 15.54 %∼22.61 % in undegraded control (CK), light degraded (LD), moderately degraded (MD) and heavy degraded (HD) grasslands, respectively, during growing seasons. With the aggravation of grassland degradation, the influence of warmi...