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Increased Soil Frost Versus Summer Drought as Drivers of Plant Biomass Responses to Reduced Precipitation: Results from a Globally Coordinated Field Experiment

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Abstract

Reduced precipitation treatments often are used in field experiments to explore the effects of drought on plant productivity and species composition. However, in seasonally snow-covered regions reduced precipitation also reduces snow cover, which can increase soil frost depth, decrease minimum soil temperatures and increase soil freeze–thaw cycles. Therefore, in addition to the effects of reduced precipitation on plants via drought, freezing damage to overwintering plant tissues at or below the soil surface could further affect plant productivity and relative species abundances during the growing season. We examined the effects of both reduced rainfall (via rain-out shelters) and reduced snow cover (via snow removal) at 13 sites globally (primarily grasslands) within the framework of the International Drought Experiment, a coordinated distributed experiment. Plant cover was estimated at the species level, and aboveground biomass was quantified at the functional group level. Among sites, we observed a negative correlation between the snow removal effect on minimum soil temperature and plant biomass production the next growing season. Three sites exhibited significant rain-out shelter effects on plant productivity, but there was no correlation among sites between the rain-out shelter effect on minimum soil moisture and plant biomass. There was no interaction between snow removal and rain-out shelters for plant biomass, although these two factors only exhibited significant effects simultaneously for a single site. Overall, our results reveal that reduced snowfall, when it decreases minimum soil temperatures, can be an important component of the total effect of reduced precipitation on plant productivity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Angelika Kübert for assistance with data collection.

Author information

Author notes

  1. HALH conceived of and designed the study and analyzed the data; all authors performed research and wrote the paper.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    Hugh A. L. Henry & Holly J. Stover

  2. Department of Range Management, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

    Mehdi Abedi

  3. Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (CSIC), Avda. Montañana 1005, 50059, Saragossa, Spain

    Concepción L. Alados, Maite Gartzia & Yolanda Pueyo

  4. Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, USA

    Karen H. Beard & Andrew Kulmatiski

  5. Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, Canada

    Lauchlan H. Fraser, Heath W. Garris & Janelle P. Paulson

  6. Disturbance Ecology, BayCEER, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Anke Jentsch & Mohammed A. S. Arfin Khan

  7. Department of Forestry and Environmental Science, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, Bangladesh

    Mohammed A. S. Arfin Khan

  8. Experimental Plant Ecology, Greifswald University, Greifswald, Germany

    Juergen Kreyling, Ilka Beil, Irmgard Blindow, Sven Dahlke, Alexandra Effinger & Andrey V. Malyshev

  9. Department of Plant Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, 51 Campus Dr., Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A8, Canada

    Eric G. Lamb

  10. Institute of Grassland Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

    Wei Sun & Xuechen Yang

  11. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Richland, Richland Center, USA

    Mathew R. Vankoughnett

  12. Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC, 3125, Australia

    Susanna Venn

  13. Ecosystem Physiology, University of Freiburg, Breisgau, Germany

    Christiane Werner

  14. Geobotany, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Breisgau, Germany

    Maren Dubbert & Tobias Gebauer

  15. Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, Research Centre for Applied Alpine Ecology, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, 3086, Australia

    John Morgan & Charles Nock

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  1. Hugh A. L. Henry
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  2. Mehdi Abedi
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  10. Wei Sun
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  16. Sven Dahlke
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  17. Maren Dubbert
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  18. Alexandra Effinger
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  19. Heath W. Garris
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  20. Maite Gartzia
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  21. Tobias Gebauer
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  22. Mohammed A. S. Arfin Khan
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  23. Andrey V. Malyshev
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  24. John Morgan
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  25. Charles Nock
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  26. Janelle P. Paulson
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  27. Yolanda Pueyo
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  28. Holly J. Stover
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  29. Xuechen Yang
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Correspondence to Hugh A. L. Henry.

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Henry, H.A.L., Abedi, M., Alados, C.L. et al. Increased Soil Frost Versus Summer Drought as Drivers of Plant Biomass Responses to Reduced Precipitation: Results from a Globally Coordinated Field Experiment. Ecosystems 21, 1432–1444 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-018-0231-7

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