Grassland stability decreases with increasing number of global change factors: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Experiments manipulating a single global change factor (GCF) have provided increasing evidence that global environmental changes, such as eutrophication, precipitation change, and warming, generally affect the temporal stability of grassland productivity. Whether the combined impact of global changes on grassland stability increases as the number of global changes increases remains unknown. Using a meta-analysis of 673 observations from 143 sites worldwide, including 7 different GCFs, we examined the responses of grassland temporal stability of productivity to increasing numbers of GCFs. We quantified the links between community stability, biotic factors (i.e., species richness, species stability, and species asynchrony), and abiotic factors (i.e., aridity index, experimental duration, and experimental intensity). Although inconsistent responses of community stability were found with different GCF types and combinations, when integrating existing GCFs studies and ignoring the identity of GCFs, we found a general decrease in community stability as the number of GCFs increases, but the main drivers of community stability varied with the numbers of GCFs. Specifically, one GCF mainly reduced species stability through species richness and thus weakened community stability. Two GCFs weakened community stability via independently weakening species stability and species asynchrony. Three GCFs reduce community stability mainly via independently weakening species asynchrony. Moreover, for single factor, the impact of GCFs on community stability was weaker under dryer conditions, but stronger when two or three factors were manipulated. In addition, the negative effect of GCFs on community stability was weaker with increasing experimental duration. Our study reveals that reduced community stability with increasing numbers of GCFs is caused by a shift from reduced species stability to reduced species asynchrony, suggesting that persistent global changes will destabilize grassland productivity by reducing asynchronous dynamics among species in response to natural environmental fluctuations.