Abstract
Diversity and nitrogen addition have positive relationships with plant productivity, yet climate-induced changes in water availability threaten to upend these established relationships. Using long-term data from three experiments in a mesic grassland (ranging from 17 to 34 yr of data), we tested how the effects of species richness and nitrogen addition on community-level plant productivity changed as a function of annual fluctuations in water availability using growing season precipitation and the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). While results varied across experiments, our findings demonstrate that water availability can magnify the positive effects of both biodiversity and nitrogen addition on productivity. These results suggest that productivity responses to anthropogenic species diversity loss and increasing nitrogen deposition could depend on precipitation regimes, highlighting the importance of testing interactions between multiple global change drivers.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | e02363 |
| Journal | Ecological Applications |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research Program, including DEB-8114302, DEB-8811884, DEB-9411972, DEB-0080382, DEB-0620652, DEB-1234162 and DEB-1831944; by the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve; and by the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences. We further thank Peter Wragg for his input during the initial working group meeting and Forest Isbell and Peter Reich for their input on the project. Author contributions: C. E. Kazanski conceived and led the Cedar Creek Graduate Synthesis Working Group, which all authors were a part of and where the manuscript idea was generated. C. E. Kazanski led research framing and design with substantial input from all authors. J. Cowles designed and performed the analyses. All authors offered analysis feedback and contributed to results interpretation. S. Dymond provided substantial input on interpretation and framing. C. E. Kazanski wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors contributed substantially to revisions. C. E. Kazanski and J. Cowles are joint first authors.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation Long‐Term Ecological Research Program, including DEB‐8114302, DEB‐8811884, DEB‐9411972, DEB‐0080382, DEB‐0620652, DEB‐1234162 and DEB‐1831944; by the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve; and by the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences. We further thank Peter Wragg for his input during the initial working group meeting and Forest Isbell and Peter Reich for their input on the project. Author contributions: C. E. Kazanski conceived and led the Cedar Creek Graduate Synthesis Working Group, which all authors were a part of and where the manuscript idea was generated. C. E. Kazanski led research framing and design with substantial input from all authors. J. Cowles designed and performed the analyses. All authors offered analysis feedback and contributed to results interpretation. S. Dymond provided substantial input on interpretation and framing. C. E. Kazanski wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors contributed substantially to revisions. C. E. Kazanski and J. Cowles are joint first authors.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the Ecological Society of America
Keywords
- SPEI
- biodiversity–ecosystem-functioning relationship
- global change
- nitrogen fertilization
- nutrient addition
- plant biomass
- precipitation
- species richness
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
- Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
