ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1635593
This article is part of the Research TopicInteractive Effects of Climate Change and Human Activities on Plant Productivity in Grassland and Cropland EcosystemsView all 11 articles
Rainfall and nitrogen addition have no synergistic effects on steppe composition and production in postgrazing succession
Provisionally accepted
- Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding, China
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Most steppes are experiencing postgrazing succession, coupled with rainfall change and nitrogen (N) deposition. Despite the importance of soil resources in shaping community multifunctionality, little is known about how rainfall increase and N deposition influence steppe composition and production during postgrazing succession. We performed a field factorial experiment, subject to rainfall and N, each with three levels, to understand how simulated rainfall increase and N deposition affect the composition and production of a Leymus chinensis steppe. At the low rainfall increase, the dominance of L. chinensis increased with increasing N, while aboveground community production remained unchanged along the N gradient. At the high rainfall increase, aboveground community production was enhanced due to low N addition, but this facilitation disappeared in the presence of high N addition, and L. chinensis dominance was no longer affected by N. N-induced soil eutrophication but not soil acidification and soil microbes strongly affected steppe composition and production. Our findings suggest that high rainfall increase might weaken the potential of N addition to contribute to steppe composition and production, and also highlight the necessity of investigating interactions among multiple global change drivers.
Keywords: Community composition and functions, Nitrogen addition, offsetting effects, postgrazing steppe succession, Rainfall intensity
Received: 26 May 2025; Accepted: 29 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xin, Huang, Liu, Li, Sun, Zhang and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hongwei Yu, Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding, China
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