Wan Zhiqiang, Gu Rui, Liang Yan, Chun Xi, Zhou Haijun, Zhang Weiqing
Key Laboratory of Mongolian Plateau's Climate System of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Inner Mongolia Normal University, Hohhot 010020, China.
College of Geographical Science, Inner Mongolia Normal University, Hohhot 010020, China.
Plants (Basel). 2025 Jun 3;14(11):1702. doi: 10.3390/plants14111702.
In the era of global climate change, existing evidence indicates that dominant species play a crucial role in regulating grassland structure and function. However, what remains overlooked are the factors that regulate the growth of dominant species under climate change. Some studies have indicated that the future climate of the Inner Mongolia grasslands will specifically show a trend of warming and humidification. Hence, in 2013, we conducted a controlled warming and precipitation addition experiment in a temperate steppe in Inner Mongolia, China. Open-top chambers (OTCs) were used to simulate warming (by 1.5 °C) and rainfall (twice a month, 10% of the average precipitation between 1960 and 2011 of the same month each time) during the growing season. In 2023, the resource utilization efficiency, morphological characteristics, leaf anatomical structure, and population quantity characteristics of the dominant species (), and community species diversity were monitored under control (CK), warming (T), precipitation addition (P), and warming plus precipitation addition (TP) conditions. We found that the plant height of significantly increased under warming; its height was 41.97 cm under TP, 41.84 cm under T, 29.48 cm under P, and 28.88 cm under CK. We observed that primarily obtains more light by increasing leaf area and height under warming conditions. Environmental changes also alter the tissue structure of leaves, leading to a decrease in lignification after increasing the water content. In this study, warming significantly increased the leaf area but decreased the leaf carbon content. Warming and precipitation addition regulated the height of by affecting the leaf area, leaf-stem ratio, and distance of the bottom leaf from the ground. Our results provide reasonable predictions regarding the succession direction of the steppe under global climate change in the future.
在全球气候变化时代，现有证据表明优势物种在调节草地结构和功能方面发挥着关键作用。然而，气候变化下调节优势物种生长的因素仍被忽视。一些研究表明，内蒙古草原未来气候将呈现明显的变暖和湿润趋势。因此，2013年我们在中国内蒙古温带草原进行了增温增雨控制实验。在生长季，使用开顶式生长室（OTC）模拟增温（升温1.5℃）和降雨（每月两次，每次为1960年至2011年同月平均降水量的10%）。2023年，在对照（CK）、增温（T）、增雨（P）和增温增雨（TP）条件下，监测了优势物种（）的资源利用效率、形态特征、叶片解剖结构和种群数量特征以及群落物种多样性。我们发现，增温条件下 的株高显著增加；TP处理下其株高为41.97厘米，T处理下为41.84厘米，P处理下为29.48厘米，CK处理下为28.88厘米。我们观察到，在增温条件下， 主要通过增加叶面积和株高来获取更多光照。环境变化也改变了 叶片的组织结构，导致其在含水量增加后木质化程度降低。在本研究中，增温显著增加了 的叶面积，但降低了叶片碳含量。增温和增雨通过影响叶面积、叶茎比和最下部叶片距地面的距离来调节 的株高。我们的研究结果为未来全球气候变化下 草原的演替方向提供了合理预测。
