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Nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass

Crossing certain aridity thresholds in global drylands can lead to abrupt decays of ecosystem attributes such as plant productivity, potentially causing land degradation and desertification. It is largely unknown, however, whether these thresholds can be altered by other key global change drivers kn...

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Autores principales: Li, Hailing, Terrer, César, Berdugo, Miguel, Maestre, Fernando T, Zhu, Zaichun, Peñuelas, Josep, Yu, Kailiang, Luo, Lin, Gong, Jie-Yu, Ye, Jian-Sheng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10600907/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37900195
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwad242
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author Li, Hailing
Terrer, César
Berdugo, Miguel
Maestre, Fernando T
Zhu, Zaichun
Peñuelas, Josep
Yu, Kailiang
Luo, Lin
Gong, Jie-Yu
Ye, Jian-Sheng
author_facet Li, Hailing
Terrer, César
Berdugo, Miguel
Maestre, Fernando T
Zhu, Zaichun
Peñuelas, Josep
Yu, Kailiang
Luo, Lin
Gong, Jie-Yu
Ye, Jian-Sheng
author_sort Li, Hailing
collection PubMed
description Crossing certain aridity thresholds in global drylands can lead to abrupt decays of ecosystem attributes such as plant productivity, potentially causing land degradation and desertification. It is largely unknown, however, whether these thresholds can be altered by other key global change drivers known to affect the water-use efficiency and productivity of vegetation, such as elevated CO(2) and nitrogen (N). Using >5000 empirical measurements of plant biomass, we showed that crossing an aridity (1–precipitation/potential evapotranspiration) threshold of ∼0.50, which marks the transition from dry sub-humid to semi-arid climates, led to abrupt declines in aboveground biomass (AGB) and progressive increases in root:shoot ratios, thus importantly affecting carbon stocks and their distribution. N addition significantly increased AGB and delayed the emergence of its aridity threshold from 0.49 to 0.55 (P < 0.05). By coupling remote sensing estimates of leaf area index with simulations from multiple models, we found that CO(2) enrichment did not alter the observed aridity threshold. By 2100, and under the RCP 8.5 scenario, we forecast a 0.3% net increase in the global land area exceeding the aridity threshold detected under a scenario that includes N deposition, in comparison to a 2.9% net increase if the N effect is not considered. Our study thus indicates that N addition could mitigate to a great extent the negative impact of increasing aridity on plant biomass in drylands. These findings are critical for improving forecasts of abrupt vegetation changes in response to ongoing global environmental change.
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spelling pubmed-106009072023-10-27 Nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass Li, Hailing Terrer, César Berdugo, Miguel Maestre, Fernando T Zhu, Zaichun Peñuelas, Josep Yu, Kailiang Luo, Lin Gong, Jie-Yu Ye, Jian-Sheng Natl Sci Rev Research Article Crossing certain aridity thresholds in global drylands can lead to abrupt decays of ecosystem attributes such as plant productivity, potentially causing land degradation and desertification. It is largely unknown, however, whether these thresholds can be altered by other key global change drivers known to affect the water-use efficiency and productivity of vegetation, such as elevated CO(2) and nitrogen (N). Using >5000 empirical measurements of plant biomass, we showed that crossing an aridity (1–precipitation/potential evapotranspiration) threshold of ∼0.50, which marks the transition from dry sub-humid to semi-arid climates, led to abrupt declines in aboveground biomass (AGB) and progressive increases in root:shoot ratios, thus importantly affecting carbon stocks and their distribution. N addition significantly increased AGB and delayed the emergence of its aridity threshold from 0.49 to 0.55 (P < 0.05). By coupling remote sensing estimates of leaf area index with simulations from multiple models, we found that CO(2) enrichment did not alter the observed aridity threshold. By 2100, and under the RCP 8.5 scenario, we forecast a 0.3% net increase in the global land area exceeding the aridity threshold detected under a scenario that includes N deposition, in comparison to a 2.9% net increase if the N effect is not considered. Our study thus indicates that N addition could mitigate to a great extent the negative impact of increasing aridity on plant biomass in drylands. These findings are critical for improving forecasts of abrupt vegetation changes in response to ongoing global environmental change. Oxford University Press 2023-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10600907/ /pubmed/37900195 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwad242 Text en © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Li, Hailing
Terrer, César
Berdugo, Miguel
Maestre, Fernando T
Zhu, Zaichun
Peñuelas, Josep
Yu, Kailiang
Luo, Lin
Gong, Jie-Yu
Ye, Jian-Sheng
Nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass
title Nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass
title_full Nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass
title_fullStr Nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass
title_full_unstemmed Nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass
title_short Nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass
title_sort nitrogen addition delays the emergence of an aridity-induced threshold for plant biomass
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10600907/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37900195
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwad242
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