Soil heterogeneity buffers community response to climate change in species-rich grassland
- Fridley, J.D.
- Grime, J.P.
- Askew, A.P.
- Moser, B.
- Stevens, Carly
DOIAbstract
Climate change impacts on vegetation are mediated by soil processes that regulate rhizosphere water balance, nutrient dynamics, and ground-level temperatures. For ecosystems characterized by high fine-scale substrate heterogeneity such as grasslands on poorly developed soils, effects of climate change on plant communities may depend on substrate properties that vary at the scale of individuals (<m2), leading to fine-scale shifts in community structure that may go undetected at larger scales. Here, we show in a long-running climate experiment in species-rich limestone grassland in Buxton, England (UK), that the resistance of the community to 15-year manipulations of temperature and rainfall at the plot scale (9 m2) belies considerable commun...
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