Global change effects on plant communities are magnified by time and the number of global change factors imposed.

Kimberly J Komatsu, Meghan L Avolio, Nathan P Lemoine, Forest Isbell, Emily Grman, Gregory R Houseman, Sally E Koerner, David S Johnson, Kevin R Wilcox, Juha M Alatalo, John P Anderson, Rien Aerts, Sara G Baer, Andrew H Baldwin, Jonathan Bates, Carl Beierkuhnlein, R Travis Belote, John Blair, Juliette M G Bloor, Patrick J Bohlen, Edward W Bork, Elizabeth H Boughton, William D Bowman, Andrea J Britton, James F Cahill, Enrique Chaneton, Nona R Chiariello, Jimin Cheng, Scott L Collins, J Hans C Cornelissen, Guozhen Du, Anu Eskelinen, Jennifer Firn, Bryan Foster, Laura Gough, Katherine Gross, Lauren M Hallett, Xingguo Han, Harry Harmens, Mark J Hovenden, Annika Jagerbrand, Anke Jentsch, Christel Kern, Kari Klanderud, Alan K Knapp, Juergen Kreyling, Wei Li, Yiqi Luo, Rebecca L McCulley, Jennie R McLaren, J Patrick Megonigal, John W Morgan, Vladimir Onipchenko, Steven C Pennings, Janet S Prevéy, Jodi N Price, Peter B Reich, Clare H Robinson, F Leland Russell, Osvaldo E Sala, Eric W Seabloom, Melinda D Smith, Nadejda A Soudzilovskaia, Lara Souza, Katherine Suding, K Blake Suttle, Tony Svejcar, David Tilman, Pedro Tognetti, Roy Turkington, Shannon White, Zhuwen Xu, Laura Yahdjian, Qiang Yu, Pengfei Zhang, Yunhai Zhang

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2020;116(36):17867-17873

PMID: 31427510

Abstract

Global change drivers (GCDs) are expected to alter community structure and consequently, the services that ecosystems provide. Yet, few experimental investigations have examined effects of GCDs on plant community structure across multiple ecosystem types, and those that do exist present conflicting patterns. In an unprecedented global synthesis of over 100 experiments that manipulated factors linked to GCDs, we show that herbaceous plant community responses depend on experimental manipulation length and number of factors manipulated. We found that plant communities are fairly resistant to experimentally manipulated GCDs in the short term (<10 y). In contrast, long-term (≥10 y) experiments show increasing community divergence of treatments from control conditions. Surprisingly, these community responses occurred with similar frequency across the GCD types manipulated in our database. However, community responses were more common when 3 or more GCDs were simultaneously manipulated, suggesting the emergence of additive or synergistic effects of multiple drivers, particularly over long time periods. In half of the cases, GCD manipulations caused a difference in community composition without a corresponding species richness difference, indicating that species reordering or replacement is an important mechanism of community responses to GCDs and should be given greater consideration when examining consequences of GCDs for the biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship. Human activities are currently driving unparalleled global changes worldwide. Our analyses provide the most comprehensive evidence to date that these human activities may have widespread impacts on plant community composition globally, which will increase in frequency over time and be greater in areas where communities face multiple GCDs simultaneously.

Address: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037; [email protected].; Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218.; Department of Biological Sciences, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53233.; Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN 55108.; Department of Biology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197.; Department of Biological Sciences, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS 67260.; Department of Biology, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC 27402.; Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062.; Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071.; Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar.; Environmental Science Center, Qatar University, Doha 2713, Qatar.; Jornada Basin Long-Term Ecological Research Station, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003.; Systems Ecology, Department of Ecological Science, Vrije Universiteit, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands.; Department of Plant Biology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901.; Department of Environmental Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740.; Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center-Burns, Agriculture Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Burns, OR 97720.; Department of Biogeography, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth 95440, Germany.; The Wilderness Society, Bozeman, MT 59715.; Division of Biology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506.; Université Clermont Auvergne, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, VetAgro-Sup, Unité Mixte de Recherche sur l'Écosystème Prairial, 63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France.; Department of Biology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816-2368.; Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2P5, Canada.; Buck Island Ranch, Archbold Biological Station, Lake Placid, FL 33852.; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309.; Ecological Sciences Group, The James Hutton Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen AB15 8QH, United Kingdom.; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E9, Canada.; Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiologicas y Ecologicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura-Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, C1417 Buenos Aires, Argentina.; Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.; State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Water and Soil Conservation, Northwest A&F University, 712100 Yangling, People's Republic of China.; Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131.; State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, 730000 Lanzhou, People's Republic of China.; Department of Physiological Diversity, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ), Leipzig 04318, Germany.; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig 04103, Germany.; Department of Ecology and Genetics, University of Oulu, Oulu 90014, Finland.; School of Earth, Environmental and Biological Sciences, Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4001, Australia.; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66047.; Kansas Biological Survey, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66047.; Department of Biological Sciences, Towson University, Towson, MD 21252.; WK Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University, Hickory Corners, MI 49060.; Graduate Program in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior, Michigan State University, Hickory Corners, MI 49060.; Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.; Department of Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.; State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100093 Beijing, People's Republic of China.; Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Environment Centre Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2UW, United Kingdom.; Biological Sciences, School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS 7001, Australia.; Department of Construction Engineering and Lighting Science, School of Engineering, Jonkoping University, 553 18 Jonkoping, Sweden.; Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth 95440, Germany.; Northern Research Station, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Rhinelander, WI 54501.; Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, 1430 Aas, Norway.; Department of Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523.; Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523.; Experimental Plant Ecology, Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, Greifswald University, Greifswald 17489, Germany.; Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86001.; Department of Plant & Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546-0091.; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79912.; Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037.; Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC 3086, Australia.; Faculty of Biology, Moscow State Lomonosov University, 119991 Moscow, Russia.; Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Houston, Houston TX 77204.; Pacific Northwest Research Station, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Olympia, WA 98512.; Institute of Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury, NSW 2640, Australia.; Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108.; Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith South DC, NSW 2751, Australia.; School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, M13 9PL Manchester, United Kingdom.; Global Drylands Center, School of Life Sciences and School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287.; Environmental Biology Department, Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, 2333 CC Leiden, The Netherlands.; Oklahoma Biological Survey & Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019.; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95060.; Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center, Oregon State University, Burns, OR 97720.; Botany Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.; Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.; Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecology, School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University, 010021 Hohhot, People's Republic of China.; National Hulunber Grassland Ecosystem Observation and Research Station, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 100081 Beijing, People's Republic of China.; State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, 730000 Lanzhou, People's Republic of China.; Ecology and Biodiversity Group, Department of Biology, Utrecht University, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands.; State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100093 Beijing, People's Republic of China.; School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332.
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