Divergent Changes in Plant Community Composition under 3-Decade Grazing Exclusion in Continental Steppe

An understanding of the factors controlling plant community composition will allow improved prediction of the responses of plant communities to natural and anthropogenic environmental change. Using monitoring data from 1980 to 2009, we quantified the changes in community composition in Leymus chinensis and Stipa grandis dominated grasslands in Inner Mongolia under long-term grazing-exclusion and free-grazing conditions, respectively. We demonstrated that the practice of long-term grazing exclusion has significant effects on the heterogeneity, the dominant species, and the community composition in the two grasslands. The community composition of L. chinensis and S. grandis grasslands exhibited directional changes with time under long-term grazing exclusion. Under free grazing, the L. chinensis community changed directionally with time, but the pattern of change was stochastic in the S. grandis community. We attributed the divergent responses to long-term grazing exclusion in the S. grandis and L. chinensis grasslands to litter accumulation and changes in the microenvironment after grazing exclusion, which collectively altered the growth and regeneration of the dominant species. The changes in the grazed grasslands were primarily determined by the selective feeding of sheep during long-term heavy grazing. Overall, the responses of the community composition of the Inner Mongolian grasslands to long-term grazing exclusion and heavy grazing were divergent, and depended primarily on the grassland type. Our findings provide new insights into the role of grazing in the maintenance of community structure and function and therefore have important implications for grassland management

Estimation of Vegetation Latent Heat Flux over Three Forest Sites in ChinaFLUX using Satellite Microwave Vegetation Water Content Index

Latent heat flux (LE) and the corresponding water vapor lost from the Earth's surface to the atmosphere, which is called Evapotranspiration (ET), is one of the key processes in the water cycle and energy balance of the global climate system. Satellite remote sensing is the only feasible technique to estimate LE over a large-scale region. While most of the previous satellite LE methods are based on the optical vegetation index (VI), here we propose a microwave-VI (EDVI) based LE algorithm which can work for both day and night time, and under clear or non-raining conditions. This algorithm is totally driven by multiple-sensor satellite products of vegetation water content index, solar radiation, and cloud properties, with some aid from a reanalysis dataset. The satellite inputs and the performance of this algorithm are validated with in situ measurements at three ChinaFLUX forest sites. Our results show that the selected satellite observations can indeed serve as the inputs for the purpose of estimating ET. The instantaneous estimations of LE (LEcal) from this algorithm show strong positive temporal correlations with the in situ measured LE (LEobs) with the correlation coefficients (R) of 0.56-0.88 in the study years. The mean bias is kept within 16.0% (23.0W/m2) across the three sites. At the monthly scale, the correlations between the retrieval and the in situ measurements are further improved to an R of 0.84-0.95 and the bias is less than 14.3%. The validation results also indicate that EDVI-based LE method can produce stable LEcal under different cloudy skies with good accuracy. Being independent of any in situ measurements as inputs, this algorithm shows great potential for estimating ET under both clear and cloudy skies on a global scale for climate study

The “Regulator” Function of Viruses on Ecosystem Carbon Cycling in the Anthropocene

Viruses act as “regulators” of the global carbon cycle because they impact the material cycles and energy flows of food webs and the microbial loop. The average contribution of viruses to the Earth ecosystem carbon cycle is 8.6‰, of which its contribution to marine ecosystems (1.4‰) is less than its contribution to terrestrial (6.7‰) and freshwater (17.8‰) ecosystems. Over the past 2,000 years, anthropogenic activities and climate change have gradually altered the regulatory role of viruses in ecosystem carbon cycling processes. This has been particularly conspicuous over the past 200 years due to rapid industrialization and attendant population growth. The progressive acceleration of the spread and reproduction of viruses may subsequently accelerate the global C cycle

Aboveground and Belowground Plant Traits Explain Latitudinal Patterns in Topsoil Fungal Communities From Tropical to Cold Temperate Forests

Soil fungi predominate the forest topsoil microbial biomass and participate in biogeochemical cycling as decomposers, symbionts, and pathogens. They are intimately associated with plants but their interactions with aboveground and belowground plant traits are unclear. Here, we evaluated soil fungal communities and their relationships with leaf and root traits in nine forest ecosystems ranging from tropical to cold temperate along a 3,700-km transect in eastern China. Basidiomycota was the most abundant phylum, followed by Ascomycota, Zygomycota, Glomeromycota, and Chytridiomycota. There was no latitudinal trend in total, saprotrophic, and pathotrophic fungal richness. However, ectomycorrhizal fungal abundance and richness increased with latitude significantly and reached maxima in temperate forests. Saprotrophic and pathotrophic fungi were most abundant in tropical and subtropical forests and their abundance decreased with latitude. Spatial and climatic factors, soil properties, and plant traits collectively explained 45% of the variance in soil fungal richness. Specific root length and root biomass had the greatest direct effects on total fungal richness. Specific root length was the key determinant of saprotrophic and pathotrophic fungal richness while root phosphorus content was the main biotic factor determining ectomycorrhizal fungal richness. In contrast, spatial and climatic features, soil properties, total leaf nitrogen and phosphorus, specific root length, and root biomass collectively explained >60% of the variance in fungal community composition. Soil fungal richness and composition are strongly controlled by both aboveground and belowground plant traits. The findings of this study provide new evidence that plant traits predict soil fungal diversity distribution at the continental scale

Herbivore exclusion stabilizes alpine grassland biomass production across spatial scales

There is growing evidence that land-use management practices such as livestock grazing can strongly impact the local diversity, functioning, and stability of grassland communities. However, whether these impacts depend on environmental condition and propagate to larger spatial scales remains unclear. Using an 8-year grassland exclosure experiment conducted at nine sites in the Tibetan Plateau covering a large precipitation gradient, we found that herbivore exclusion increased the temporal stability of alpine grassland biomass production at both the local and larger (site) spatial scales. Higher local community stability was attributed to greater stability of dominant species, whereas higher stability at the larger scale was linked to higher spatial asynchrony of productivity among local communities. Additionally, sites with higher mean annual precipitation had lower dominant species stability and lower grassland stability at both the spatial scales considered. Our study provides novel evidence that livestock grazing can impair grassland stability across spatial scales and climatic gradients

Diurnal Temperature Variation and Plants Drive Latitudinal Patterns in Seasonal Dynamics of Soil Microbial Community

Seasonality, an exogenous driver, motivates the biological and ecological temporal dynamics of animal and plant communities. Underexplored microbial temporal endogenous dynamics hinders the prediction of microbial response to climate change. To elucidate temporal dynamics of microbial communities, temporal turnover rates, phylogenetic relatedness, and species interactions were integrated to compare those of a series of forest ecosystems along latitudinal gradients. The seasonal turnover rhythm of microbial communities, estimated by the slope (w value) of similarity-time decay relationship, was spatially structured across the latitudinal gradient, which may be caused by a mixture of both diurnal temperature variation and seasonal patterns of plants. Statistical analyses revealed that diurnal temperature variation instead of average temperature imposed a positive and considerable effect alone and also jointly with plants. Due to higher diurnal temperature variation with more climatic niches, microbial communities might evolutionarily adapt into more dispersed phylogenetic assembly based on the standardized effect size of MNTD metric, and ecologically form higher community resistance and resiliency with stronger network interactions among species. Archaea and the bacterial groups of Chloroflexi, Alphaproteobacteria, and Deltaproteobacteria were sensitive to diurnal temperature variation with greater turnover rates at higher latitudes, indicating that greater diurnal temperature fluctuation imposes stronger selective pressure on thermal specialists, because bacteria and archaea, single-celled organisms, have extreme short generation period compared to animal and plant. Our findings thus illustrate that the dynamics of microbial community and species interactions are crucial to assess ecosystem stability to climate variations in an increased climatic variability era