Climate Variability Rather Than Livestock Grazing Dominates Changes in Alpine Grassland Productivity Across Tibet

Li, Meng and Wu, Jianshuang and Feng, Yunfei and Niu, Ben and He, Yongtao and Zhang, Xianzhou (2021) Climate Variability Rather Than Livestock Grazing Dominates Changes in Alpine Grassland Productivity Across Tibet. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9. ISSN 2296-701X

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Abstract

Alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau, being vulnerable to environmental and anthropogenic changes, have experienced dramatic climate change and intensive livestock grazing during the last half-century. Climate change, coupled with grazing activities, has profoundly altered alpine grassland function and structure and resulted in vast grassland degradation. To restore degraded grasslands, the Central Government of China has implemented the Ecological Security Barrier Protection and Construction Project since 2008 across the Tibetan Autonomous Region. However, the relative effect of climate change and grazing activities on the variation in alpine grassland productivity is still under debate. In this study, we quantified how aboveground net primary production (ANPP) varied before (2000–2008) and after (2009–2017) starting the project across different alpine grasslands and how much variance in ANPP could be attributed to climate change and grazing disturbance, in terms of temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, and grazing intensity. Our results revealed that Tibet’s climate got warmer and wetter, and grazing intensity decreased after starting the project. Mean ANPP increased at approximately 81% of the sites, on average from 27.0 g C m–2 during 2000–2008 to 28.4 g C m–2 during 2009–2017. The ANPP positively correlated with annual temperature and precipitation, but negatively with grazing intensity for both periods. Random forest modeling indicated that grazing intensity (14.5%) had a much lower influence in controlling the dynamics of grassland ANPP than precipitation (29.0%), suggesting that precipitation variability was the key factor for alpine grassland ANPP increase across Tibet.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: Science Global Plos > Multidisciplinary
Depositing User: Unnamed user with email support@science.globalplos.com
Date Deposited: 04 Oct 2023 05:25
Last Modified: 04 Oct 2023 05:25
URI: http://ebooks.manu2sent.com/id/eprint/1373

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