Resistance and Resilience of Nine Plant Species to Drought in Inner Mongolia Temperate Grasslands of Northern China

Applied Sciences

Zhenxing Zhou¹  Dong Wang¹  Huanhuan Song¹  Anqun Chen¹  Xinyu Yan¹  Panpan Liu¹  Minglu Ji¹  Yuan Miao¹  Meiguang Jiang¹  Shijie Han¹ 

[1] International Joint Research Laboratory for Global Change Ecology, School of Life Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China;

关键词: precipitation exclusion;    typical steppe;    coverage;    abundance;    root length;   

DOI  :  10.3390/app12104967

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Drought has been approved to affect the process of terrestrial ecosystems from different organizational levels, including individual, community, and ecosystem levels; however, which traits play the dominant role in the resistance of plant to drought is still unclear. The experiment was conducted in semi-arid temperate grassland and included six paired control and drought experimental plots. The drought treatment was completely removed from precipitation treatments from 20 June to 30 August 2013. At the end of the growing season in 2013, we removed the rain cover for ecosystem recovery in 2014. The results demonstrated that drought treatment increased the coverage of and abundance Heteropappus altaicus, Potentilla bifurca, and Artemisia scoparia by 126.2–170.0% and 63.4–98.9%, but decreased that of Artemisia frigida, Dontostemon dentatus, and Melissilus ruthenicu by 46.2–60.2% and 49.6–60.1%. No differences in coverage and abundance of Agropyron cristatum, Stipa kiylovii, and Cleistogenes squarrosa were found between control and drought treatment. The coverage and abundance of Stipa kiylovii have exceeded the original level before the drought stress, but Heteropappus altaicus still had not recovered in the first year after the disturbance. Our findings indicate that plant functional traits are important for the understanding of the resistance and resilience of plants to drought stress, which can provide data support for grassland management.

【 授权许可】

Unknown