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Research article2021Peer reviewedOpen access

Fertilized graminoids intensify negative drought effects on grassland productivity

Van Sundert, Kevin; Arfin Khan, Mohammed A. S.; Bharath, Siddharth; Buckley, Yvonne M.; Caldeira, Maria C.; Donohue, Ian; Dubbert, Maren; Ebeling, Anne; Eisenhauer, Nico; Eskelinen, Anu; Finn, Alain; Gebauer, Tobias; Haider, Sylvia; Hansart, Amandine; Jentsch, Anke; Kuebert, Angelika; Nijs, Ivan; Nock, Charles A.; Nogueira, Carla; Porath-Krause, Anita J.;
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Abstract

Droughts can strongly affect grassland productivity and biodiversity, but responses differ widely. Nutrient availability may be a critical factor explaining this variation, but is often ignored in analyses of drought responses. Here, we used a standardized nutrient addition experiment covering 10 European grasslands to test if full-factorial nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium addition affected plant community responses to inter-annual variation in drought stress and to the extreme summer drought of 2018 in Europe. We found that nutrient addition amplified detrimental drought effects on community aboveground biomass production. Drought effects also differed between functional groups, with a negative effect on graminoid but not forb biomass production. Our results imply that eutrophication in grasslands, which promotes dominance of drought-sensitive graminoids over forbs, amplifies detrimental drought effects. In terms of climate change adaptation, agricultural management would benefit from taking into account differential drought impacts on fertilized versus unfertilized grasslands, which differ in ecosystem services they provide to society.

Keywords

drought; ecosystem; functional group; grassland; nutrient; Nutrient Network (NutNet)

Published in

Global Change Biology
2021, Volume: 27, number: 11, pages: 2441-2457
Publisher: WILEY

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Climate Research
    Agricultural Science
    Ecology

    Publication identifier

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15583

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/111353