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Hossain, Md Lokman ; Li, Jianfeng ; Lai, Yangchen ; Beierkuhnlein, Carl:
Long-term evidence of differential resistance and resilience of grassland ecosystems to extreme climate events.
In: Environmental Monitoring and Assessment.
Bd. 195
(2023)
Heft 6
.
- 734.
ISSN 1573-2959
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11269-8
Abstract
Grassland ecosystems are affected by the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme climate events (e.g., droughts). Understanding how grassland ecosystems maintain their functioning, resistance, and resilience under climatic perturbations is a topic of current concern. Resistance is the capacity of an ecosystem to withstand change against extreme cli-mate, while resilience is the ability of an ecosystem to return to its original state after a perturbation. Using the growing season Normalized Difference Vegeta-tion Index (NDVIgs, an index of vegetation growth) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (a drought index), we evaluated the response, resistance, and resilience of vegetation to climatic conditions for alpine grassland, grass-dominated steppe, hay meadow, arid steppe, and semi-arid steppe in northern China for the period 1982–2012. The results show that NDVIgs varied significantly across these grasslands, with the highest (lowest) NDVIgs values in alpine grassland (semi-arid steppe). We found increasing trends of greenness in alpine grassland, grass-dominated steppe, and hay meadow, while there were no detectable changes of NDVIgs in arid and semi-arid steppes. NDVIgs decreased with increasing dryness from extreme wet to extreme dry. Alpine and steppe grasslands exhibited higher resist-ance to and lower resilience after extreme wet, while lower resistance to and higher resilience after extreme dry conditions. No significant differences in resist-ance and resilience of hay meadow under climatic conditions suggest the stability of this grassland under climatic perturbations. This study concludes that highly resistant grasslands under conditions of water surplus are low resilient, but low resistant eco-systems under conditions of water shortage are highly resilient