Melinda D. Smith, Colorado State UniversityFollow
Kate D. Wilkins, Denver Zoo
Martin C. Holdrege, Utah State University
Peter Wilfahrt, University of Minnesota
Scott L. Collins, University of New Mexico
Alan K. Knapp, Colorado State University
Osvaldo E. Sala, Arizona State University
Jeffrey S. Dukes, Carnegie Institution for Science
Richard P. Phillips, Indiana University
Laura Yahdjian, University of Buenos Aires
Laureano A. Gherardi, University of California
Timothy Ohlert, Colorado State University
Claus Beier, University of Copenhagen
Lauchlan H. Fraser, Thompson Rivers University
Anke Jentsch, University of Bayreuth
Michael E. Loik, University of California, Santa Cruz
Fernando T. Maestre, Universidad de Alicante
Sally A. Power, Western Sydney University
Qiang Yu, Beijing Forestry University
Andrew J. Felton, Montana State University
Seth M. Munson, Southwest Biological Science Center
Yiqi Luo, Cornell University
Hamed Abdoli, Tarbiat Modares University
Mehdi Abedi, Tarbiat Modares University
Concepción L. Alados, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Juan Alberti, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata
Moshe Alon, Tel Aviv University
Hui An, Ningxia University
Brian Anacker, City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks
Maggie Anderson, University of Minnesota
Harald Auge, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ
Seton Bachle, Kansas State University
Khadijeh Bahalkeh, Tarbiat Modares University
Michael Bahn, University of Innsbruck
Amgaa Batbaatar, University of Alberta
Taryn Bauerle, Cornell University
Karen H. Beard, Utah State UniversityFollow
et. al.

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Volume

121

Issue

4

Publisher

National Academy of Sciences

Publication Date

1-8-2024

Journal Article Version

Version of Record

First Page

1

Last Page

10

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Abstract

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.

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