Plant species richness attenuates drought effects on the primary productivity of Patagonian rangelands
- Gaitan, Juan J.
- Bran, Donaldo Mauricio
- Oliva, Gabriel
- Maestre, Fernando T.
- Aguiar, Martin Roberto
- Jobbagy Gampel, Esteban Gabriel
- Buono, Gustavo
- Ferrante, Daniela
- Nakamatsu, Viviana
- Ciari, Georgina
- Salomone, Jorge
- Massara, Virginia
DOIAbstract
Drought is an increasingly common phenomenon in drylands as a consequence of climate change. We used 311 sites across a broad range of environmental conditions in Patagonian rangelands to evaluate how drought severity and temperature (abiotic factors) and vegetation structure (biotic factors) modulate the impact of a drought event on the annual integral of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI-I), our surrogate of ecosystem functioning. We found that NDVI-I decreases were larger with both increasing drought severity and temperature. Plant species richness (SR) and shrub cover (SC) attenuated the effects of drought on NDVI-I. Grass cover did not affect the impacts of drought on NDVI-I. Our results suggest that warming and species loss...
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