Qinghai Key Laboratory of Cold Region Restoration Ecology has made progress in the study of the relationship between species diversity and productivity on long-term simulated warming responses in alpine meadows

The impacts of climate warming on grassland biodiversity and ecosystem functions are irreversible
.
Alpine meadows are the dominant ecosystems of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and have attracted much attention
because of their sensitivity to global climate change responses.
However, the impact of climate warming on the relationship between biodiversity and productivity in alpine meadows is not yet universally understood
.
The research team of Qinghai Key Laboratory of Cold Region Restoration Ecology of the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences took the alpine dwarf grass meadow as the research object, and carried out the response of species diversity and productivity to long-term simulated warming from the community level and functional group level
.
The results showed that there was a strong correlation between species diversity and productivity in alpine meadow, and the increase of species richness and species diversity promoted the accumulation of aboveground biomass, but the relationship between the two was weakened by simulated warming, and the linear relationship
between species diversity and underground biomass was significantly strengthened.
Species diversity had a great influence on aboveground biomass before warming, while species diversity had a significant
impact on underground biomass after warming.
The study found that aboveground biomass is more dependent on species diversity, while subsurface biomass is more dependent on species dominance
.
The relationship between species richness of weeds and aboveground biomass plays a dominant role in the relationship between the two at the community level
.
Poaceae and weeds are key components of alpine meadow species diversity and biomass relationships in response to climate warming at the community level
.
The study highlights the important role
of alpine meadow plant functional groups in addressing climate change and grassland conservation.

The findings were published in Ecological Indicators
under the title Warming changed the relationship between species diversity and primary productivity of alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau 。 The study was jointly funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U21A2021), the Second Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Comprehensive Scientific Expedition Research Project (2019QZKK0302), the Chinese Academy of Sciences-Qinghai Provincial People's Government Sanjiangyuan National Park Joint Research Project (LHZX-2020-08) and other projects, with Dr.
Ma Li, Special Research Assistant Dr.
Ma Li, as the first author, and researcher Zhou Huakun as the corresponding author
.

Figure 1 simulates the change of important values of plant functional groups in alpine meadows under gradient warming

Fig.
2: Changes in the relationship between plant species richness and aboveground biomass in functional groups under control and simulated warming