Grasslands maintain stability in productivity through compensatory effects and dominant species stability under extreme precipitation patterns

Abstract

Extreme climatic events are likely to intensify under climate change and can have different effects on ecosystems depending on their timing and magnitude. Understanding how productivity responds to extreme precipitation patterns requires assessing stability and vulnerability during critical growing periods at the plant community level. In this study, we experimentally imposed two contrasting types of extreme precipitation patterns, including extreme drought (excluding all rainfall for 30 consecutive days) during early-, mid-, and late-stages of the growing season, and heavy rainfall (adding 14.1 mm of rainfall every day for 20 consecutive days) during mid- and late-stages of the growing season over four years (2013–2016) in a steppe community in Inner Mongolia, China. We found that extreme drought and heavy rainfall had no effect on community aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP), species richness, and dominance at any stage of the growing season. Community stability in response to extreme drought was mainly driven by compensation among species and the stability of dominant species, while the compensatory effect among species and functional groups, and the stability of dominant species contributed to the community stability in response to heavy rainfall. Overall, our findings indicate that the responses of the ecosystem to intra-seasonal contrasting extreme precipitation patterns can be driven by similar stability mechanisms and suggest that semiarid temperate steppe communities may have strong initial resistance to more frequent extreme climatic events in the future.