Published

We characterized the sensitivity of biological soil crusts to drought (drought plot in photo) in dry grassland ecosystems (Fernandes et al. 2018). We also documented plant evolutionary responses to drought (Whitney et al. 2019)
Credit: Lauren Baur

The climate of SEV LTER ecosystems has become drier and more variable during the past 100 years. SEV LTER research is gaining new insight into the biological consequences of these dual climate changes. For instance, increased climate variability has benefitted desert grassland during dry periods but reduced its productivity in wet periods, while plains grassland has been more sensitive to variability during droughts.

 

Learn more

  1. Rudgers, JA et al. 2018. Climate sensitivity functions and net primary production: A framework for incorporating climate mean and variability. Ecology. doi: 10.1002/ecy.2136
  2. Fernandes, V. M. C., N. M. Machado de Lima, D. Roush, J. A. Rudgers, S. L. Collins, and F. Garcia-Pichel (2018) Exposure to predicted precipitation patterns decreases population size and alters community structure of cyanobacteria in biological soil crusts from the Chihuahuan Desert. Environmental Microbiology 20: 259–269. doi:10.1111/1462-2920.13983

Contact

Jennifer Rudgers
jrudgers@unm.edu

Posted:  July 16, 2020  

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