The responses of grassland plants to experimentally simulated climate change depend on land use and region

Global Change Biology

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 127-137

  Bütof, Astrid ^a   von Riedmatten, Lars R ^b,c   Dormann, Carsten F ^b   Scherer Lorenzen, Michael ^c   Welk, Erik ^a   Bruelheide, Helge ^a  

^a MARTIN LUTHER UNIVERSITY HALLE WITTENBERG   (Germany)

^b HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH UFZ   (Germany)

^c UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG   (Germany)

Author keywords

Biodiversity Exploratories; Climate change; Field experiment; Grassland management; Plant distribution

Indexed keywords

AIR TEMPERATURE; BIODIVERSITY; CLIMATE CHANGE; CLIMATE EFFECT; GLOBAL CLIMATE; GRASSLAND; GROWTH RATE; GROWTH RESPONSE; LAND USE; NICHE; PLANT COMMUNITY; PRECIPITATION (CLIMATOLOGY); SPECIES DIVERSITY; SURVIVAL;

EID: 84155166953     PISSN: 13541013     EISSN: 13652486     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02539.x     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Box EO (1996) Plant functional types and climate at the global scale. Journal of Vegetation Science, 7, 309-320.
2. Briemle G, Nitsche S, Nitsche L (2002) Nutzungswertzahlen für Gefäßpflanzen des Grünlandes. Schriftenreihe für Vegetationskunde, 38, 203-225.
3. Brown JH, Valone TJ, Curtin CG (1997) Reorganization of an arid ecosystem in response to recent climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 94, 9729-9733.
4. de Chazal J, Rounsevell MDA (2009) Land-use and climate change within assessments of biodiversity change: a review. Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions, 19, 306-315.
5. Christensen JH, Christensen OB (2007) A summary of the PRUDENCE model projections of changes in European climate by the end of this century. Climatic Change, 81, 7-30.
6. Díaz S, Cabido M (1997) Plant functional types and ecosystem function in relation to global change. Journal of Vegetation Science, 8, 463-474.
7. Dormann CF (2007) Promising the future? Global change projections of species distributions. Basic and Applied Ecology, 8, 387-397.
8. 2], warming, and soil moisture. Journal of Plant Ecology, 2, 1-11.
9. Fischer M, Bossdorf O, Gockel S et al. (2010) Implementing large-scale and long-term functional biodiversity research: the Biodiversity Exploratories. Basic and Applied Ecology, 11, 473-485.
10. Gibson DJ (2002) Methods in Comparative Plant Population Ecology. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
11. Grime JP (1977) Evidence for existence of 3 primary strategies in plants and its relevance to ecological and evolutionary theory. American Naturalist, 111, 1169-1194.
12. Guisan A, Zimmermann NE (2000) Predictive habitat distribution models in ecology. Ecological Modelling, 135, 147-186.
13. Heisler-White JL, Blair JM, Kelly EF, Harmoney K, Knapp AK (2009) Contingent productivity responses to more extreme rainfall regimes across a grassland biome. Global Change Biology, 15, 2894-2904.
14. Hijmans RJ, Graham CH (2006) The ability of climate envelope models to predict the effect of climate change on species distributions. Global Change Biology, 12, 2272-2281.
15. Hijmans RJ, Cameron SE, Parra JL, Jones PG, Jarvis A (2005) Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 25, 1965-1978.
16. Hultén E, Fries M (1986) Atlas of North European Vascular Plants. North of the Tropic of Cancer. Koeltz Scientific Books, Königstein.
17. Hunt R (1990) Basic Growth Analyses. Unwin Hyman, London.
18. Huntley B, Berry PM, Cramer W, McDonald AP (1995) Modelling present and potential future ranges of some European higher plants using climate response surfaces. Journal of Biogeography, 22, 967-1001.
19. IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (eds Pachauri RK, Reisinger A). IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 104 pp. Available at: (accessed 30 March 2011).
20. Jackson RB, Canadell J, Ehleringer JR, Mooney HA, Sala OE, Schulze E-D (1996) A global analysis of root distributions for terrestrial biomes. Oecologia, 108, 389-411.
21. Jäger EJ, Werner K (2005) Werner Rothmaler: Exkursionsflora von Deutschland. Kritischer Band. Elsevier (Spektrum), München.
22. Kahmen A, Perner J, Buchmann N (2005) Diversity-dependent productivity in semi-natural grasslands following climate perturbations. Functional Ecology, 19, 594-601.
23. Kelly AE, Goulden ML (2008) Rapid shifts in plant distribution with recent climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105, 11823-11826.
24. Kemp DR, Michalk DL (2007) Towards sustainable grassland and livestock management. The Journal of Agricultural Science, 145, 543-564.
25. Knapp AK, Beier C, Briske DD et al. (2008) Consequences of more extreme precipitation regimes for terrestrial ecosystems. BioScience, 58, 811.
26. Kühner A, Kleyer M (2008) A parsimonious combination of functional traits predicting plant response to disturbance and soil fertility. Journal of Vegetation Science, 19, 681-692.
27. Loarie SR, Duffy PB, Hamilton H, Asner GP, Field C, Ackerly DD (2009) The velocity of climate change. Nature, 462, 1052-1055.
28. McKenney DW, Pedlar JH, Lawrence K, Campbell K, Hutchinson MF (2007) Potential impacts of climate change on the distribution of North American trees. BioScience, 57, 939-948.
29. Menzel A, Sparks TH, Estrella N et al. (2006) European phenological response to climate change matches the warming pattern. Global Change Biology, 12, 1969-1976.
30. Meusel H, Jäger EJ (1992) Vergleichende Chorologie der Zentraleuropäischen Flora III. Fischer, Jena.
31. Meusel H, Jäger EJ, Weinert E (1965) Vergleichende Chorologie der Zentraleuropäischen Flora I. Fischer, Jena.
32. Miranda JD, Padilla FM, Lázaro R, Pugnaire FI (2009) Do changes in rainfall patterns affect semiarid annual plant communities? Journal of Vegetation Science, 20, 269-276.
33. Moog D, Poschlod P, Kahmen S, Schreiber K-F (2009) Comparison of species composition between different grassland management treatments after 25 years. Applied Vegetation Science, 5, 99-106.
34. Padilla FM, Miranda JD, Pugnaire FI (2007) Early root growth plasticity in seedlings of three Mediterranean woody species. Plant and Soil, 296, 103-113.
35. Padilla FM, Miranda JD, Jorquera MJ, Pugnaire FI (2009) Variability in amount and frequency of water supply affects roots but not growth of arid shrubs. Plant Ecology, 204, 261-270.
36. Parmesan C (2006) Ecological and evolutionary responses to recent climate change. Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics, 37, 637-669.
37. Parmesan C, Yohe G (2003) A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature, 421, 37-42.
38. Pauli H, Gottfried M, Reiter K, Klettner C, Grabherr G (2007) Signals of range expansions and contractions of vascular plants in the high Alps: observations (1994-2004) at the GLORIA master site Schrankogel, Tyrol, Austria. Global Change Biology, 13, 147-156.
39. Peñuelas J, Prieto P, Beier C et al. (2007) Response of plant species richness and primary productivity in shrublands along a north-south gradient in Europe to seven years of experimental warming and drought: reductions in primary productivity in the heat and drought year of 2003. Global Change Biology, 13, 2563-2581.
40. Pereira HM, Leadley PW, Proença V et al. (2010) Scenarios for global biodiversity in the 21st century. Science, 330, 1496-1501.
41. Pompe S, Hanspach J, Badeck F, Klotz S, Thuiller W, Kühn I (2008) Climate and land use change impacts on plant distributions in Germany. Biology Letters, 4, 564-567.
42. Ramirez J, Jarvis A (2008) High Resolution Statistically Downscaled Future Climate Surfaces. Available at: (accessed 5 April 2011).
43. Roßberg D, Michel V, Graf R, Neukampf R (2007) Definition von Boden-Klima-Räumen für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Nachrichtenblatt des Deutschen Pflanzenschutzdienstes, 59, 155-161.
44. Römermann C, Bernhardt-Römermann M, Kleyer M, Poschlod P (2009) Substitutes for grazing in semi-natural grasslands - do mowing or mulching represent valuable alternatives to maintain vegetation structure? Journal of Vegetation Science, 20, 1086-1098.
45. Ryser P (1993) Influences of neighbouring plants on seedling establishment in limestone grassland. Journal of Vegetation Science, 4, 195-202.
46. Sardans J, Peñuelas J, Estiarte M (2006) Warming and drought alter soil phosphatase activity and soil P availability in a Mediterranean shrubland. Plant and Soil, 289, 227-238.
47. Sardans J, Peñuelas J, Estiarte M, Prieto P (2008) Warming and drought alter C and N concentration, allocation and accumulation in a Mediterranean shrubland. Global Change Biology, 14, 2304-2316.
48. Scheidel U, Bruelheide H (2004) Versuche zur Beweidung von Bergwiesen im Harz. Hercynia, 37, 87-101.
49. Schulze E-D, Mooney HA, Sala OE et al. (1996) Rooting depth, water availability, and vegetation cover along an aridity gradient in Patagonia. Oecologia, 108, 503-511.
50. Spekat A, Enke W, Kreienkamp F (2006) Neuentwicklung von regional hoch aufgelösten Wetterlagen für Deutschland und Bereitstellung regionaler Klimaszenarien mit dem Regionalisierungsmodell WETTREG 2005 auf der Basis von globalen Klimasimulationen mit ECHAM5/MPI - OM T63L31 2010 bis 2100 für die SRES - Szenarien B1, A1B und A2. Projektbericht im Rahmen des F+E Vorhabens 204 41 138. "Klimaauswirkungen und Anpassung in Deutschland - Phase 1: Erstellung regionaler Klimaszenarien für Deutschland".
51. Stammel B, Kiehl K, Pfadenhauer J (2003) Alternative management on fens: response of vegetation to grazing and mowing. Applied Vegetation Science, 6, 245-254.
52. Thomas CD, Cameron A, Green RE et al. (2004) Extinction risk from climate change. Nature, 427, 145-148.
53. Thuiller W (2007) Biodiversity - climate change and the ecologist. Nature, 448, 550-552.
54. Thuiller W, Lavorel S, Araújo MB, Sykes MT, Prentice IC (2005) Climate change threats to plant diversity in Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102, 8245-8250.
55. Trabucco A, Zomer RJ (2009) Global Aridity Index (Global-Aridity) and Global Potential Evapo-Transpiration (Global-PET) Geospatial Database. CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information. Published online, available from the CGIAR-CSI GeoPortal. Available at: (accessed 20 July 2011).
56. Tubiello FN, Soussana J-F, Howden SM (2007) Crop and pasture response to climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 19686-19690.
57. Vittoz P, Randin C, Dutoit A, Bonnet F, Hegg O (2009) Low impact of climate change on subalpine grasslands in the Swiss Northern Alps. Global Change Biology, 15, 209-220.
58. Walker MD, Wahren CH, Hollister RD et al. (2006) Plant community responses to experimental warming across the tundra biome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 1342-1346.
59. Walther G-R, Berger S, Sykes MT (2005) An ecological 'footprint' of climate change. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 272, 1427-1432.
60. Walther G-R (2010) Community and ecosystem responses to recent climate change. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365, 2019-2024.
61. Weißhuhn K, Auge H, Prati D (2011) Geographic variation in the response to drought in nine grassland species. Basic and Applied Ecology, 12, 21-28.
62. Wipf S, Stoeckli V, Bebi P (2009) Winter climate change in alpine tundra: plant responses to changes in snow depth and snowmelt timing. Climatic Change, 94, 105-121.
63. Zuur AF, Ieno EN, Walker NJ, Saveliev AA, Smith GM (2009) Mixed Effects Models and Extensions in Ecology With R. Springer, New York.