Impact of climate change on alpine plant community in Qilian Mountains of China.

There is growing evidence that mountains are experiencing some of the highest rates of climate warming, but assessment of the ecological impacts of climate change is often limited due to a lack of long-term monitoring data for comparative study in many ecosystems. In this study, we present an empirical work for assessing ecological responses with botanical legacy data in the Qilian Mountains of China. Plot-scale and transect-wide survey was conducted for alpine shrub communities along an elevational gradient 20 years ago. Recently, we resampled the permanent plots to investigate how the community changes may be linked to climatic variability. We found no significant temporal shifts in species richness; but the community structure underwent substantial changes, as indicated by visible shifts in the relative density of dominant shrub species and the frequency of occurrence of understory herbaceous species. This reshuffling of plant community composition reflected a series of complex responses to climate change. Specifically, wet-demanding species have become more frequent due to the recently enhanced precipitation, while the replacement of some low-statured plants with different requirements for light was indirectly regulated by climate warming via reshaping the altitudinal patterns of dominant shrubs. Climate-mediated shifts in shrub species distribution altered the expected evolutional trajectory of alpine community, which increased the complexity and nonlinearity of the responses of the communities at different altitudes to climatic variability. Our results suggested that in-depth knowledge of indirect effects can facilitate to lessen the uncertainty in predicting future community dynamics in a changing climate.

Effects of Drought Stress on Leaf Functional Traits and Biomass Characteristics of Atriplex canescens.

Drought is a critical factor constraining plant growth in arid regions. However, the performance and adaptive mechanism of Atriplex canescens (A. canescens) under drought stress remain unclear. Hence, a three-year experiment with three drought gradients was performed in a common garden, and the leaf functional traits, biomass and biomass partitioning patterns of A. canescens were investigated. The results showed that drought stress had significant effects on A. canescens leaf functional traits. A. canescens maintained the content of malondialdehyde (MDA) and the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), but the peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) activity decreased, and the content of proline (Pro) and soluble sugar (SS) increased only under heavy drought stress. Under drought stress, the leaves became smaller but denser, the specific leaf area (SLA) decreased, but the dry matter content (LDMC) maintained stability. Total biomass decreased 60% to 1758 g under heavy drought stress and the seed and leaf biomass was only 10% and 20% of non-stress group, but there had no significant difference on root biomass. More biomass was allocated to root under drought stress. The root biomass allocation ratio was doubled from 9.62% to 19.81% under heavy drought, and the root/shoot ratio (R/S) increased from 0.11 to 0.25. The MDA was significantly and negatively correlated with biomass, while the SPAD was significantly and positively correlated with total and aboveground organs biomass. The POD, CAT, Pro and SS had significant correlations with root and seed allocation ratio. The leaf morphological traits related to leaf shape and weight had significant correlations with total and aboveground biomass and biomass allocation. Our study demonstrated that under drought stress, A. canescens made tradeoffs between growth potential and drought tolerance and evolved with a conservative strategy. These findings provide more information for an in-depth understanding of the adaption strategies of A. canescens to drought stress and provide potential guidance for planting and sustainable management of A. canescens in arid and semi-arid regions.

Intra-annual stem radial growth of Qinghai spruce and its environmental drivers in the Qilian Mountains, northwestern China.

Tree stem radial growth could be used to estimate forest productivity, which plays a dominant role in the carbon sink of terrestrial ecosystems. However, it is still obscure how intra-annual stem radial growth is regulated by environmental variables. Here, we monitored Qinghai spruce stem radial growth over seven years and analyzed the environmental drivers of the intra-annual stem radial changes in the Qilian Mountains at low (2700 m) and high altitudes (3200 m). We found that stem radial growth initiated when the daily mean minimum air temperature reached 1.6oC, while the cessation of stem growth was unrelated to temperatures and water conditions. Initiations of stem growth at 2700 m were significantly earlier than that at 3200 m. Maximum growth rates were observed before the summer solstice at low altitude, whereas at high altitude, the majority of them occurred after the summer solstice. Most variability in annual stem increment (AI) can be explained by the rate (Rm) than by the duration of stem growth (∆t), and 78.9 % and 69.6 % of the variability in AI were attributable to Rm for the lower and upper site, respectively. Structural equation modeling revealed that precipitation (P) could both directly positively influence stem radial increment (SRI) and indirectly positively influence SRI through influencing relative humidity (RH), but the positive effect of P on SRI was higher at low altitude than at high altitude. Daily minimum air temperature (Tmin) was also the main direct diver of SRI, and the positive effect of Tmin on SRI was higher at high altitude than at low altitude. Considering the trends in climate warming and humidification over the past decades, climate changes would result in earlier initiation of Qinghai spruce stem growth and promote the growth through positive response to increased precipitation in low altitude and through elevated temperature in high altitude, respectively.

Modulation of evapotranspiration and stream runoff by weathered bedrock in arid and semi-arid mountains.

Earth's Critical Zone exhibits remarkable heterogeneity and complexity. Hence, further investigation is required to examine the composition of Earth's Critical Zone as well as the diverse eco-hydrological patterns they exhibit under varying climatic and geological circumstances. This exploration should primarily be conducted through the investigation and experiments of the hillslope unit, where the topography and weathered bedrock are representative, with particular emphasis on semi-arid regions where water resources serve as the primary limiting factor. Here, we have determined that the structure of the weathering profile displays systematic variation across the topography and heterogeneous landscape on uninterrupted slopes. Differences in the structure of the subsurface critical zone led to differences in its water storage capacity at the same time. Runoff in alpine shrubs and forests was dominated by subsurface runoff, and grassland was dominated by surface runoff. In the alpine shrub immediately adjacent to the watershed, an estimated quantity of 129 mm of water is stored within the unsaturated zone of the soil, serving as exchange water to replenish moisture in the underlying bedrock. In contrast to alpine shrubs, an estimated quantity of 62.7 mm of water originates from the unsaturated zone of soil and weathered bedrock in the forest. However, approximately 21.1 mm of moisture is unavailable to plants. The soil water storage in grasslands exhibits a decline throughout the growing season, with a subsequent augmentation occurring solely after substantial precipitation events exceeding 20 mm. In wet years, dynamic storage predominantly manifests as groundwater saturation throughout the entire ground and high subsurface runoff. In dry years, the limited runoff response indicates that the catchment's dynamic water storage primarily comprises "indirect" water storage, which predominantly resides within the soil, saprolite, and weathered rock below the "field capacity", subsequently being released into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration.

Leaf water potential-dependent leaflet closure contributes to legume leaves cool down and drought avoidance under diurnal drought stress.

Efficient thermoregulation under diurnal drought stress protects leaves from photosystem damage and water supply-demand imbalance, yet the cool effect and drought avoidance by leaflet closure have not been well understood. We investigated the cool effect and the drought avoidance of leaflet closure in legume species that survived in the semi-arid region facing seasonal and diurnal drought stress. The results showed that leaflet closure effectively cooled down legume leaves through a reduction of projected leaflet area and the cosine of the angle of incidence (cos i). The leaflet closure was strongly dependent on leaf water potential (Ψleaf). In addition, by characterizing the sequence of key leaf drought response traits, we found leaflet closure occurred after stomatal closure and reduced transpiration rate but before hydraulic failure and turgor loss point (Ψtlp). The meta-analysis also showed that the leaflet closure and cos i decreased after the stomatal conductance declined but before midday. These results imply that Ψleaf-dependent leaflet closure as an alternative to transpiration for leaflet cooling down and as a protective drought avoidance strategy assisting sessile legume plants survival under drought stress.

Site- and species-specific climatic responses of two co-occurring shrubs in the temperate Alxa Desert Plateau, northwest China.

In the context of global precipitation anomalies and climate warming, the evolution of fragile desert ecosystems, which account for one-third of the world's land area, will become more complex. Studies of regional climate change and ecosystem response are important components of global climate change research, especially in arid desert regions. Zygophyllum xanthoxylum and Ammopiptanthus mongolicus are two dominant but endangered shrub species in the Alxa Desert in the arid region of central Asia. Using dendrochronological methods, we studied the response of radial growth of those two species to climate factors, and the adaptability of the two shrub populations under a regional warming trend. We found that radial growth of both shrubs was mainly affected by precipitation during the growing season. In additionally, along with the decrease of precipitation and the increase of temperature from east to west of Alxa desert Plateau, the limiting effect of drought during the growing season on radial growth increased. The climate response characteristics and changes between dry and wet periods exhibited spatial and temporal heterogeneity due to micro-level geomorphological factors. Under a regional climate warming trend, individual growth and population development of the two endangered shrubs will be adversely affected. In areas where these species are naturally distributed, populations will gradually become concentrated in micro-geomorphic regions with better soil moisture conditions, such as low-lying areas in the gullies that develop in alluvial fans. This finding has important scientific significance for understanding the development of the region's dominant shrub populations and protection of these and other endangered plants in arid desert areas.