Spohn Marie, Bagchi Sumanta, Bakker Jonathan D, Borer Elizabeth T, Carbutt Clinton, Catford Jane A, Dickman Christopher R, Eisenhauer Nico, Eskelinen Anu, Hagenah Nicole, Hautier Yann, Koerner Sally E, Komatsu Kimberly J, Laanisto Lauri, Lekberg Ylva, Martina Jason P, Martinson Holly, Pärtel Meelis, Peri Pablo L, Risch Anita C, Smith Nicholas G, Stevens Carly, Veen G F Ciska, Virtanen Risto, Yahdjian Laura, Young Alyssa L, Young Hillary S, Seabloom Eric W
Dept of Soil and Environment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala, Sweden.
Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.
Commun Biol. 2025 Jan 21;8(1):97. doi: 10.1038/s42003-025-07518-w.
Grasslands cover approximately a third of the Earth's land surface and account for about a third of terrestrial carbon storage. Yet, we lack strong predictive models of grassland plant biomass, the primary source of carbon in grasslands. This lack of predictive ability may arise from the assumption of linear relationships between plant biomass and the environment and an underestimation of interactions of environmental variables. Using data from 116 grasslands on six continents, we show unimodal relationships between plant biomass and ecosystem characteristics, such as mean annual precipitation and soil nitrogen. Further, we found that soil nitrogen and plant diversity interacted in their relationships with plant biomass, such that plant diversity and biomass were positively related at low levels of nitrogen and negatively at elevated levels of nitrogen. Our results show that it is critical to account for the interactive and unimodal relationships between plant biomass and several environmental variables to accurately include plant biomass in global vegetation and carbon models.
草原覆盖了地球陆地表面约三分之一的面积，占陆地碳储量的约三分之一。然而，我们缺乏强大的草原植物生物量预测模型，而草原植物生物量是草原碳的主要来源。这种预测能力的缺乏可能源于对植物生物量与环境之间线性关系的假设以及对环境变量相互作用的低估。利用来自六大洲116个草原的数据，我们展示了植物生物量与生态系统特征（如年平均降水量和土壤氮含量）之间的单峰关系。此外，我们发现土壤氮和植物多样性在与植物生物量的关系中相互作用，以至于在低氮水平下植物多样性与生物量呈正相关，而在高氮水平下呈负相关。我们的结果表明，在全球植被和碳模型中准确纳入植物生物量，考虑植物生物量与多个环境变量之间的相互作用和单峰关系至关重要。
