TY - JOUR

T1 - Extreme drought impacts have been underestimated in grasslands and shrublands globally

AU - Smith, Melinda D.

AU - Wilkins, Kate D.

AU - Holdrege, Martin C.

AU - Wilfahrt, Peter

AU - Collins, Scott L.

AU - Knapp, Alan K.

AU - Sala, Osvaldo E.

AU - Dukes, Jeffrey S.

AU - Phillips, Richard P.

AU - Yahdjian, Laura

AU - Gherardi, Laureano A.

AU - Ohlert, Timothy

AU - Beier, Claus

AU - Fraser, Lauchlan H.

AU - Jentsch, Anke

AU - Loik, Michael E.

AU - Maestre, Fernando T.

AU - Power, Sally A.

AU - Yu, Qiang

AU - Felton, Andrew J.

AU - Munson, Seth M.

AU - Luo, Yiqi

AU - Abdoli, Hamed

AU - Abedi, Mehdi

AU - Alados, Concepción L.

AU - Alberti, Juan

AU - Alon, Moshe

AU - An, Hui

AU - Anacker, Brian

AU - Anderson, Maggie

AU - Auge, Harald

AU - Bachle, Seton

AU - Bahalkeh, Khadijeh

AU - Bahn, Michael

AU - Batbaatar, Amgaa

AU - Bauerle, Taryn

AU - Beard, Karen H.

AU - Behn, Kai

AU - Beil, Ilka

AU - Biancari, Lucio

AU - Blindow, Irmgard

AU - Bondaruk, Viviana Florencia

AU - Borer, Elizabeth T.

AU - Bork, Edward W.

AU - Bruschetti, Carlos Martin

AU - Byrne, Kerry M.

AU - Cahill, James F.

AU - Calvo, Dianela A.

AU - Carbognani, Michele

AU - Cardoni, Augusto

AU - Carlyle, Cameron N.

AU - Castillo-Garcia, Miguel

AU - Chang, Scott X.

AU - Chieppa, Jeff

AU - Cianciaruso, Marcus V.

AU - Cohen, Ofer

AU - Cordeiro, Amanda L.

AU - Cusack, Daniela F.

AU - Dahlke, Sven

AU - Daleo, Pedro

AU - D'Antonio, Carla M.

AU - Dietterich, Lee H.

AU - Doherty, Tim S.

AU - Dubbert, Maren

AU - Ebeling, Anne

AU - Eisenhauer, Nico

AU - Fischer, Felícia M.

AU - Forte, Tai G.W.

AU - Gebauer, Tobias

AU - Gozalo, Beatriz

AU - Greenville, Aaron C.

AU - Guidoni-Martins, Karlo G.

AU - Hannusch, Heather J.

AU - Haugum, Siri Vatsø

AU - Hautier, Yann

AU - Hefting, Mariet

AU - Henry, Hugh A.L.

AU - Hoss, Daniela

AU - Iribarne, Oscar

AU - Isbell, Forest

AU - Johnson, Yari

AU - Jordan, Samuel

AU - Kelly, Eugene F.

AU - Kimmel, Kaitlin

AU - Kreyling, Juergen

AU - Kröel-Dulay, György

AU - Ingrisch, Johannes

AU - Kröpfl, Alicia

AU - Kübert, Angelika

AU - Kulmatiski, Andrew

AU - Lamb, Eric G.

AU - Larsen, Klaus Steenberg

AU - Larson, Julie

AU - Leder, Cintia V.

AU - Linstädter, Anja

AU - Liu, Jielin

AU - Liu, Shirong

AU - Lodge, Alexandra G.

AU - Longo, Grisel

AU - Loydi, Alejandro

AU - Luan, Junwei

AU - Lawson, Jason

AU - Lubbe, Frederick Curtis

AU - Macfarlane, Craig

AU - Mackie-Haas, Kathleen

AU - Malyshev, Andrey V.

AU - Maturano-Ruiz, Adrián

AU - Merchant, Thomas

AU - Metcalfe, Daniel B.

AU - Mori, Akira S.

AU - Mudongo, Edwin

AU - Newman, Gregory S.

AU - Nielsen, Uffe N.

AU - Nimmo, Dale

AU - Niu, Yujie

AU - Nobre, Paola

AU - O'Connor, Rory C.

AU - Ogaya, Romà

AU - Oñatibia, Gastón R.

AU - Orbán, Ildikó

AU - Osborne, Brooke

AU - Otfinowski, Rafael

AU - Pärtel, Meelis

AU - Penuelas, Josep

AU - Peri, Pablo L.

AU - Peter, Guadalupe

AU - Petraglia, Alessandro

AU - Picon-Cochard, Catherine

AU - Pillar, Valério D.

AU - Piñeiro-Guerra, Juan Manuel

AU - Ploughe, Laura W.

AU - Plowes, Robert M.

AU - Portales-Reyes, Cristy

AU - Prober, Suzanne M.

AU - Pueyo, Yolanda

AU - Reed, Sasha C.

AU - Ritchie, Euan G.

AU - Rodríguez, Dana Aylén

AU - Rogers, William E.

AU - Roscher, Christiane

AU - Sánchez, Ana M.

AU - Santos, Bráulio A.

AU - Scarfó, María Cecilia

AU - Seabloom, Eric W.

AU - Shi, Baoku

AU - Souza, Lara

AU - Stampfli, Andreas

AU - Standish, Rachel J.

AU - Sternberg, Marcelo

AU - Sun, Wei

AU - Sünnemann, Marie

AU - Tedder, Michelle

AU - Thorvaldsen, Pål

AU - Tian, Dashuan

AU - Tielbörger, Katja

AU - Valdecantos, Alejandro

AU - van den Brink, Liesbeth

AU - Vandvik, Vigdis

AU - Vankoughnett, Mathew R.

AU - Velle, Liv Guri

AU - Wang, Changhui

AU - Wang, Yi

AU - Wardle, Glenda M.

AU - Werner, Christiane

AU - Wei, Cunzheng

AU - Wiehl, Georg

AU - Williams, Jennifer L.

AU - Wolf, Amelia A.

AU - Zeiter, Michaela

AU - Zhang, Fawei

AU - Zhu, Juntao

AU - Zong, Ning

AU - Zuo, Xiaoan

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of short-term (~1 y) drought events—the most common duration of drought—globally. Yet the impact of this intensification of drought on ecosystem functioning remains poorly resolved. This is due in part to the widely disparate approaches ecologists have employed to study drought, variation in the severity and duration of drought studied, and differences among ecosystems in vegetation, edaphic and climatic attributes that can mediate drought impacts. To overcome these problems and better identify the factors that modulate drought responses, we used a coordinated distributed experiment to quantify the impact of short-term drought on grassland and shrubland ecosystems. With a standardized approach, we imposed ~a single year of drought at 100 sites on six continents. Here we show that loss of a foundational ecosystem function—aboveground net primary production (ANPP)—was 60% greater at sites that experienced statistically extreme drought (1-in-100-y event) vs. those sites where drought was nominal (historically more common) in magnitude (35% vs. 21%, respectively). This reduction in a key carbon cycle process with a single year of extreme drought greatly exceeds previously reported losses for grasslands and shrublands. Our global experiment also revealed high variability in drought response but that relative reductions in ANPP were greater in drier ecosystems and those with fewer plant species. Overall, our results demonstrate with unprecedented rigor that the global impacts of projected increases in drought severity have been significantly underestimated and that drier and less diverse sites are likely to be most vulnerable to extreme drought.

AB - Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of short-term (~1 y) drought events—the most common duration of drought—globally. Yet the impact of this intensification of drought on ecosystem functioning remains poorly resolved. This is due in part to the widely disparate approaches ecologists have employed to study drought, variation in the severity and duration of drought studied, and differences among ecosystems in vegetation, edaphic and climatic attributes that can mediate drought impacts. To overcome these problems and better identify the factors that modulate drought responses, we used a coordinated distributed experiment to quantify the impact of short-term drought on grassland and shrubland ecosystems. With a standardized approach, we imposed ~a single year of drought at 100 sites on six continents. Here we show that loss of a foundational ecosystem function—aboveground net primary production (ANPP)—was 60% greater at sites that experienced statistically extreme drought (1-in-100-y event) vs. those sites where drought was nominal (historically more common) in magnitude (35% vs. 21%, respectively). This reduction in a key carbon cycle process with a single year of extreme drought greatly exceeds previously reported losses for grasslands and shrublands. Our global experiment also revealed high variability in drought response but that relative reductions in ANPP were greater in drier ecosystems and those with fewer plant species. Overall, our results demonstrate with unprecedented rigor that the global impacts of projected increases in drought severity have been significantly underestimated and that drier and less diverse sites are likely to be most vulnerable to extreme drought.

KW - climate extreme | Drought-Net | International Drought Experiment | productivity

U2 - 10.1073/pnas.2309881120

DO - 10.1073/pnas.2309881120

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 38190514

AN - SCOPUS:85181992376

VL - 121

JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

SN - 0027-8424

IS - 4

M1 - e2309881120

ER -