Extreme Drought Increases the Temporal Variability of Grassland Productivity by Suppressing Dominant Grasses

Abstract

Extreme droughts are intensifying, yet their impact on temporal variability of grassland functioning and its drivers remains poorly understood. We imposed a 6-year extreme drought in two semiarid grasslands to explore how drought influences the temporal variability of ANPP and identify potential stabilising mechanisms. Drought decreased ANPP while increasing its temporal variability across grasslands. In the absence of drought, ANPP variability was strongly driven by the dominant plant species (i.e., mass-ratio effects), as captured by community-weighted traits and species stability. However, drought decreased the dominance of perennial grasses, providing opportunities for subordinate species to alter the stability of productivity through compensatory dynamics. Specifically, under drought, species asynchrony emerged as a more important correlate of ANPP variability than community-weighted traits or species stability. Our findings suggest that in grasslands, prolonged, extreme droughts may decrease the relative contribution of mass-ratio effects versus compensatory dynamics to productivity stability by reducing the influence of dominant species.