Climate legacies determine grassland responses to future rainfall regimes

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlin M. Broderick ◽  
Kate Wilkins ◽  
Melinda D. Smith ◽  
John M. Blair
Keyword(s):  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coline Deveautour ◽  
Suzanne Donn ◽  
Sally Power ◽  
Kirk Barnett ◽  
Jeff Powell

Future climate scenarios predict changes in rainfall regimes. These changes are expected to affect plants via effects on the expression of root traits associated with water and nutrient uptake. Associated microorganisms may also respond to these new precipitation regimes, either directly in response to changes in the soil environment or indirectly in response to altered root trait expression. We characterised arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal communities in an Australian grassland exposed to experimentally altered rainfall regimes. We used Illumina sequencing to assess the responses of AM fungal communities associated with four plant species sampled in different watering treatments and evaluated the extent to which shifts were associated with changes in root traits. We observed that altered rainfall regimes affected the composition but not the richness of the AM fungal communities, and we found distinctive communities in the increased rainfall treatment. We found no evidence of altered rainfall regime effects via changes in host physiology because none of the studied traits were affected by changes in rainfall. However, specific root length was observed to correlate with AM fungal richness, while concentrations of phosphorus and calcium in root tissue and the proportion of root length allocated to fine roots were correlated to community composition. Our study provides evidence that climate change and its effects on rainfall may influence AM fungal community assembly, as do plant traits related to plant nutrition and water uptake. We did not find evidence that host responses to altered rainfall drive AM fungal community assembly in this grassland ecosystem.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coline Deveautour ◽  
Sally Power ◽  
Kirk Barnett ◽  
Raul Ochoa-Hueso ◽  
Suzanne Donn ◽  
...  

Climate models project overall a reduction in rainfall amounts and shifts in the timing of rainfall events in mid-latitudes and sub-tropical dry regions, which threatens the productivity and diversity of grasslands. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi may help plants to cope with expected changes but may also be impacted by changing rainfall, either via the direct effects of low soil moisture on survival and function or indirectly via changes in the plant community. In an Australian mesic grassland (former pasture) system, we characterised plant and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal communities every six months for nearly four years to two altered rainfall regimes: i) ambient, ii) rainfall reduced by 50% relative to ambient over the entire year and iii) total summer rainfall exclusion. Using Illumina sequencing, we assessed the response of AM fungal communities sampled from contrasting rainfall treatments and evaluated whether variation in AM fungal communities was associated with variation in plant community richness and composition. We found that rainfall reduction influenced the fungal communities, with the nature of the response depending on the type of manipulation, but that consistent results were only observed after more than two years of rainfall manipulation. We observed significant co-associations between plant and AM fungal communities on multiple dates. Predictive co-correspondence analyses indicated more support for the hypothesis that fungal community composition influenced plant community composition than vice versa. However, we found no evidence that altered rainfall regimes were leading to distinct co-associations between plants and AM fungi. Overall, our results provide evidence that grassland plant communities are intricately tied to variation in AM fungal communities. However, in this system, plant responses to climate change may not be directly related to impacts of altered rainfall regimes on AM fungal communities. Our study shows that AM fungal communities respond to changes in rainfall but that this effect was not immediate. The AM fungal community may influence the composition of the plant community. However, our results suggest that plant responses to altered rainfall regimes at our site may not be resulting via changes in the AM fungal communities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique Michot ◽  
Daniel Vila ◽  
Damien Arvor ◽  
Thomas Corpetti ◽  
Josyane Ronchail ◽  
...  

Knowledge and studies on precipitation in the Amazon Basin (AB) are determinant for environmental aspects such as hydrology, ecology, as well as for social aspects like agriculture, food security, or health issues. Availability of rainfall data at high spatio-temporal resolution is thus crucial for these purposes. Remote sensing techniques provide extensive spatial coverage compared to ground-based rainfall data but it is imperative to assess the quality of the estimates. Previous studies underline at regional scale in the AB, and for some years, the efficiency of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) 3B42 Version 7 (V7) (hereafter 3B42) daily product data, to provide a good view of the rainfall time variability which is important to understand the impacts of El Nino Southern Oscilation. Then our study aims to enhance the knowledge about the quality of this product on the entire AB and provide a useful understanding about his capacity to reproduce the annual rainfall regimes. For that purpose we compared 3B42 against 205 quality-controlled rain gauge measurements for the period from March 1998 to July 2013, with the aim to know whether 3B42 is reliable for climate studies. Analysis of quantitative (Bias, Relative RMSE) and categorical statistics (POD, FAR) for the whole period show a more accurate spatial distribution of mean daily rainfall estimations in the lowlands than in the Andean regions. In the latter, the location of a rain gauge and its exposure seem to be more relevant to explain mismatches with 3B42 rather than its elevation. In general, a good agreement is observed between rain gauge derived regimes and those from 3B42; however, performance is better in the rainy period. Finally, an original way to validate the estimations is by taking into account the interannual variability of rainfall regimes (i.e., the presence of sub-regimes): four sub-regimes in the northeast AB defined from rain gauges and 3B42 were found to be in good agreement. Furthermore, this work examined whether TRMM 3B42 V7 rainfall estimates for all the grid points in the AB, outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and water vapor flux patterns are consistent in the northeast of AB.


Molecules ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (7) ◽  
pp. 1240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Bentley ◽  
John P. Moore ◽  
Jill M. Farrant

The leaves and twigs of the desiccation-tolerant medicinal shrub Myrothamnus flabellifolia are harvested for use in traditional and commercial teas and cosmetics due to their phenolic properties. The antioxidant and pharmacological value of this plant has been widely confirmed; however, previous studies typically based their findings on material collected from a single region. The existence of phenolic variability between plants from different geographical regions experiencing different rainfall regimes has thus not been sufficiently evaluated. Furthermore, the anthocyanins present in this plant have not been assessed. The present study thus used an untargeted liquid chromatography-tandem-mass spectrometry approach to profile phenolics in M. flabellifolia material collected from three climatically distinct (high, moderate, and low rainfall) regions representing the western, southern, and eastern extent of the species range in southern Africa. Forty-one putative phenolic compounds, primarily flavonoids, were detected, nine of which are anthocyanins. Several of these compounds are previously unknown from M. flabellifolia. Using multivariate statistics, samples from different regions could be distinguished by their phenolic profiles, supporting the existence of regional phenolic variability. This study indicates that significant phenolic variability exists across the range of M. flabellifolia, which should inform both commercial and traditional cultivation and harvesting strategies.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron S. David ◽  
Lukas P. Bell‐Dereske ◽  
Sarah M. Emery ◽  
Brandon M. McCormick ◽  
Eric W. Seabloom ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2016 ◽  
Vol 233 ◽  
pp. 147-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Brilli ◽  
B. Gioli ◽  
P. Toscano ◽  
M. Moriondo ◽  
A. Zaldei ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. 1646-1660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen-lei Wei ◽  
Hong-yue Sun ◽  
Hao-di Xu ◽  
Gang Wu ◽  
Wei Xie

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 1187
Author(s):  
Marcelo Rafael Malardo ◽  
Patrícia Andrea Monquero ◽  
Paulo Henrique Vieira dos Santos ◽  
Nagilla Moraes Ribeiro ◽  
Paulo Vinicius da Silva ◽  
...  

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the sowing depth and amount of sugarcane straw on the soil on the emergence of Chloris polydactyla (‘capim-branco’) and Eleusine indica (Indian goosegrass) and to determine the efficacy of herbicides applied pre-emergence in the control of these species under different straw amount and rainfall regime conditions. The experiments were conducted in a completely randomized design with four replications. In the first experiment, the effects of six sowing depths (0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, and 10 cm) and six sugarcane straw amounts (0, 1, 2, 4, 8 and 10 t ha -1) were assessed on the emergence of Indian goosegrass and ‘capim-branco’ in a 6 x 6 factorial arrangement. In the second experiment, the efficacy in the control of these species was evaluated for one control without herbicide and five treatments (indaziflam, metribuzin, tebuthiuron, indaziflam + metribuzin, and indaziflam + tebuthiuron) applied pre-emergence over four straw amounts (0, 1, 2, and 4 t ha-1) in a 6 x 4 factorial arrangement. This experiment was evaluated under two rainfall regimes in separate experiments (simulation of 20 mm of rainfall 1 or 10 days after herbicide application). The ‘capim-branco’ showed a marked reduction in emergence beginning at 2 t ha-1 of straw and a 2 cm sowing depth. For the Indian goosegrass, the decline in emergence mainly occurred beginning at 4 t ha-1 of straw and a 4 cm sowing depth. Only some of the Indian goosegrass plants emerged at the greater sowing depths (8 and 10 cm) and straw amounts (8 and 10 t ha-1), whereas no emergence of the ‘capim-branco’ was observed under these conditions. The treatments with sowing at a 1 cm depth and with 0, 1, 2, and 4 t ha-1 of straw provided the highest emergence percentage for the species. Application of the herbicide indaziflam alone was the only ineffective treatment for the control of the weeds regardless of the amount of straw and the water regime used. We concluded that the increase in the sowing depth and the amount of straw significantly reduced the emergence of the species and that the presence of straw and the dry period interfered with the herbicide efficacy.


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