Abstract
Increases in extremely large precipitation events (deluges) and shifts in seasonal patterns of water availability with climate change will both have important consequences for ecosystem function, particularly in water-limited regions. While previous work in the semi-arid shortgrass steppe of northeastern Colorado has demonstrated this ecosystem’s strong sensitivity to growing season deluges, our understanding of ecosystem responses to deluges during the dormant season is limited. Here, we imposed experimental 100 mm deluges (~ 30% of mean annual precipitation) in either September or October in a native C4-dominated shortgrass steppe ecosystem to evaluate the impact of this post-growing season shift in water availability during the autumn and the following growing season. Soil moisture for both deluge treatments remained elevated compared with ambient levels through April as spring precipitation was atypically low. Despite overall low levels of productivity with spring drought, these deluges from the previous autumn increased aboveground net primary production (ANPP), primarily due to increases with C4 grasses. C3 ANPP was also enhanced, largely due to an increase in the annual C3 grass, Vulpia octoflora, in the October deluge treatment. While spring precipitation has historically been the primary determinant of ecosystem function in this ecosystem, this combination of two climate extremes—an extremely wet autumn followed by a naturally-occurring spring drought—revealed the potential for meaningful carryover effects from autumn precipitation. With climate change increasing the likelihood of extremes during all seasons, experiments which create novel climatic conditions can provide new insight into the dynamics of ecosystem functioning in the future.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
Experiment data are available via Dryad (https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.37pvmcvqz). All climate data are publicly available at NOAA’s National Climate Data Center (www.ncdc.noaa.gov/).
References
Abramoff RZ, Finzi AC (2015) Are above- and below-ground phenology in sync? New Phytol 205:1054–1061. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.13111
Ahlström A, Raupach MR, Schurgers G, Smith B, Arneth A, Jung M, Reichstein M, Canadell JG, Friedlingstein P, Jain AK, Kato E, Poulter B, Sitch S, Stocker BD, Viovy N, Wang YP, Wiltshire A, Zaehle S, Zeng N (2015) The dominant role of semi-arid ecosystems in the trend and variability of the land CO 2 sink. Science 348:895–899. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa1668
Asner GP, Elmore AJ, Olander LP, Martin RE, Harris AT (2004) Grazing systems, ecosystem responses, and global change. Annu Rev Environ Resour 29:261–299. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.energy.29.062403.102142
Bates D, Mächler M, Bolker B, Walker S (2015) Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. J Stat Softw 67(1):1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
Bengtsson J, Bullock JM, Egoh B, Everson C, Everson T, O’Connor T, O’Farrell PJ, Smith HG, Lindborg R (2019) Grasslands-more important for ecosystem services than you might think. Ecosphere 10:e02582. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2582
Burke IC, Lauenroth WK, Parton WJ (1997) Regional and temporal variation in net primary production and nitrogen mineralization in grasslands. Ecology 78:1330–1340. https://doi.org/10.1890/0012-9658(1997)078[1330:RATVIN]2.0.CO;2
Collins M, Knutti R, Arblaster J, Dufresne JL, Fichefet T, Friedlingstein P, Gao X, Gutowski WJ, Johns T, Krinner G, Shongwe M, Tebaldi C, Weaver AJ, Wehner M (2013) Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker TF, Qin D, Plattner G.-K, Tignor M, Allen SK, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V, Midgley PM (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA
Concilio AL, Prevéy JS, Omasta P, O’Connor J, Nippert JB, Seastedt TR (2015) Response of a mixed grass prairie to an extreme precipitation event. Ecosphere 6:art172. https://doi.org/10.1890/ES15-00073.1
Derner JD, Hart RH (2007) Grazing-induced modifications to peak standing crop in northern mixed-grass prairie. Rangel Ecol Manag 60:270–276. https://doi.org/10.2111/1551-5028(2007)60[270:GMTPSC]2.0.CO;2
Derner JD, Hess BW, Olson RA, Schuman GE (2008) Functional group and species responses to precipitation in three semi-arid rangeland ecosystems. Arid Land Res Manag 22:81–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/15324980701784274
Dijkstra FA, Augustine DJ, Brewer P, von Fischer JC (2012) Nitrogen cycling and water pulses in semiarid grasslands: are microbial and plant processes temporally asynchronous? Oecologia 170:799–808. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2336-6
Donat MG, Lowry AL, Alexander LV, O’Gorman PA, Maher N (2016) More extreme precipitation in the world’s dry and wet regions. Nature Clim Change 6:508–513. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2941
Dufek NA, Augustine DJ, Blumenthal DM, Kray JA, Derner JD (2018) Dormant-season fire inhibits sixweeks fescue and enhances forage production in shortgrass steppe. Fire Ecol 14:33–49. https://doi.org/10.4996/fireecology.140132048
Filippa G, Cremonese E, Migliavacca M, Galvagno M, Forkel M, Wingate L, Tomelleri E, Morra di Cella U, Richardson AD (2016) Phenopix: A R package for image-based vegetation phenology. Agric For Meteorol 220:141–150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2016.01.006
Fischer EM, Beyerle U, Knutti R (2013) Robust spatially aggregated projections of climate extremes. Nat Clim Change 3:1033–1038. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2051
Gill RA, Burke IC, Lauenroth WK, Milchunas DG (2002) Longevity and turnover of roots in the shortgrass steppe: influence of diameter and depth. Plant Ecol 159:241–251
Gochis D, Schumacher R, Friedrich K, Doesken N, Kelsch M, Sun J, Ikeda K, Lindsey D, Wood A, Dolan B, Matrosov S, Newman A, Mahoney K, Rutledge S, Johnson R, Kucera P, Kennedy P, Sempere-Torres D, Steiner M, Roberts R, Wilson J, Yu W, Chandrasekar V, Rasmussen R, Anderson A, Brown B (2015) The great Colorado flood of September 2013. Bull Am Meteor Soc 96:1461–1487. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00241.1
Goren A, Viljugrein H, Rivrud IM, Jore S, Bakka H, Vindenes Y, Mysterud A (2023) The emergence and shift in seasonality of Lyme borreliosis in Northern Europe. Proc R Soc B 290:20222420. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.2420
Griffin-Nolan RJ, Carroll CJW, Denton EM, Johnston MK, Collins SL, Smith MD, Knapp AK (2018) Legacy effects of a regional drought on aboveground net primary production in six central US grasslands. Plant Ecol 219:505–515. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-018-0813-7
Hajek OL, Knapp AK (2022) Shifting seasonal patterns of water availability: ecosystem responses to an unappreciated dimension of climate change. New Phytol 233:119–125. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17728
Hartman MD, Parton WJ, Derner JD, Schulte DK, Smith WK, Peck DE, Day KA, Del Grosso SJ, Lutz S, Fuchs BA, Chen M, Gao W (2020) Seasonal grassland productivity forecast for the U.S. Great Plains using Grass-Cast. Ecosphere. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3280
Haverd V, Smith B, Trudinger C (2016) Dryland vegetation response to wet episode, not inherent shift in sensitivity to rainfall, behind Australia’s role in 2011 global carbon sink anomaly. Glob Change Biol 22:2315–2316. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13202
Heisler-White JL, Knapp AK, Kelly EF (2008) Increasing precipitation event size increases aboveground net primary productivity in a semi-arid grassland. Oecologia 158:129–140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-008-1116-9
Hermance JF, Augustine DJ, Derner JD (2015) Quantifying characteristic growth dynamics in a semi-arid grassland ecosystem by predicting short-term NDVI phenology from daily rainfall: a simple four parameter coupled-reservoir model. Int J Remote Sens 36:5637–5663. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2015.1103916
Hoover DL, Lauenroth WK, Milchunas DG, Porensky LM, Augustine DJ, Derner JD (2021) Sensitivity of productivity to precipitation amount and pattern varies by topographic position in a semiarid grassland. Ecosphere. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3376
Hoover DL, Hajek OL, Smith MD, Wilkins K, Slette IJ, Knapp AK (2022) Compound hydroclimatic extremes in a semi-arid grassland: Drought, deluge, and the carbon cycle. Glob Change Biol 28:2611–2621. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16081
Hoover DL, Derner JD (2020) Long Term Agroecosystem Research Network (LTAR) Meteorological Station Data on the Central Plains Experimental Range (CPER) USDA Agricultural Research Service. https://data.nal.usda.gov/dataset/long-term-agroecosystem-research-network-ltar-meteorological-station-data-central-plains-experimental-range-cper. Accessed 2023–03–05
Hufkens K, Basler D, Milliman T, Melaas EK, Richardson AD (2018) An integrated phenology modelling framework in r. Methods Ecol Evol 9:1276–1285. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12970
Jung M, Reichstein M, Ciais P, Seneviratne SI, Sheffield J, Goulden ML, Bonan G, Cescatti A, Chen J, De Jeu R, Dolman AJ, Eugster W, Gerten D, Gianelle D, Gobron N, Heinke J, Kimball J, Law BE, Montagnani L, Mu Q, Mueller B, Oleson K, Palpale D, Richardson AD, Roupsard O, Running S, Tomelleri E, Viovy N, Weber U, Williams C, Wood E, Zaehle S, Zhang K (2010) Recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend due to limited moisture supply. Nature 467:951–954. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09396
Knapp AK, Hoover DL, Wilcox KR, Avolio ML, Koerner SE, La Pierre KJ, Loik ME, Luo Y, Sala OE, Smith MD (2015) Characterizing differences in precipitation regimes of extreme wet and dry years: implications for climate change experiments. Glob Change Biol 21:2624–2633. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12888
Kunkel KE, Karl TR, Brooks H, Kossin J, Lawrimore JH, Arndt D, Bosart L, Changnon D, Cutter SL, Doesken N, Emanuel K, Groisman PY, Katz RW, Knutson T, O’brien JJ, Paciorek CJ, Peterson TC, Redmond K, Robinson D, Trapp J, Vose R, Weaver S, Wehner M, Wolter K, Wuebbles D (2013) Monitoring and understanding trends in extreme storms: state of knowledge. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 94(4):499–514. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00262.1
Lauenroth WK, Burke IC (2008) Ecology of the shortgrass steppe: a long-term perspective. Oxford University Press
Lauenroth WK, Sala OE (1992) Long-term forage production of North American shortgrass steppe. Ecol Appl 2:397–403. https://doi.org/10.2307/1941874
Li P, Sayer EJ, Jia Z, Liu W, Wu Y, Yang S, Wang C, Yang L, Chen D, Bai Y, Liu L (2020) Deepened winter snow cover enhances net ecosystem exchange and stabilizes plant community composition and productivity in a temperate grassland. Glob Change Biol 26:3015–3027. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15051
Loik ME, Griffith AB, Alpert H (2013) Impacts of long-term snow climate change on a high-elevation cold desert shrubland, California, USA. Plant Ecol 214:255–266. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-012-0164-8
Mahoney K, Ralph FM, Wolter K, Doesken N, Dettinger M, Gottas D, Coleman T, White A (2015) Climatology of extreme daily precipitation in colorado and its diverse spatial and seasonal variability. J Hydrometeorol 16:781–792. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-14-0112.1
Menzel A, Sparks TH, Estrella N, Koch E, Aasa A, Ahas R, Alm-Kübler K, Bissolli P, Braslavská OG, Briede A, Chmielewski FM, Crepinsek Z, Curnel Y, Dahl A, Defila C, Donnelly A, Filella Y, Jatczak K, Mage F, Mestre A, Nordli Ø, Peñuelas J, Pirinen P, Remisova V, Scheifinger H, Striz M, Susnik A, van Vliet AJH, Wielgolaski F, Zach S, Zust A (2006) European phenological response to climate change matches the warming pattern: European Phenological Response to climate change. Glob Change Biol 12:1969–1976. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2006.01193.x
Milchunas DG, Lauenroth WK (2001) Belowground primary production by carbon isotope decay and long-term root biomass dynamics. Ecosystems 4:139–150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s100210000064
Milchunas DG, Lauenroth WK, Chapman PL, Kazempour MK (1989) Effects of grazing, topography, and precipitation on the structure of a semiarid grassland. Vegetatio 80:11–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00049137
Milliman T, Seyednasrollah B, Young AM, Hufkens K, Friedl MA, Frolking S, Richardson AD, Abraha M, Allen DW, Apple M, Arain MA, Baker J, Baker JM, Bernacchi CJ, Bhattacharjee J, Blanken P, Bosch DD, Boughton R, Boughton EH, Verfaillie J (2019) PhenoCam dataset v20: digital camera imagery from the PhenoCam network, 2000–2018 (Version 2). ORNL distributed active archive center. 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1689
Moore LM, Lauenroth WK, Bell DM, Schlaepfer DR (2015) Soil water and temperature explain canopy phenology and onset of spring in a semiarid steppe. Great Plains Res 25:121–138. https://doi.org/10.1353/gpr.2015.0027
Moore Powell K (2016) The impact of changing precipitation on water and carbon cycling in semiarid grasslands of the Colorado Front Range (Doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder)
Moritz S, Bartz-Beielstein T (2017) imputeTS: time series missing value imputation in R. R J 9(1):207–218. https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2017-009
Nelson JA, Morgan JA, LeCain DR, Mosier AR, Milchunas DG, Parton BA (2004) Elevated CO 2 increases soil moisture and enhances plant water relations in a long-term field study in semi-arid shortgrass steppe of Colorado. Plant Soil 259:169–179. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:PLSO.0000020957.83641.62
Oesterheld M, Loreti J, Semmartin M, Sala OE (2001) Inter-annual variation in primary production of a semi-arid grassland related to previous-year production. J Veg Sci 12:137–142. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1654-1103.2001.tb02624.x
Pall P, Patricola CM, Wehner MF, Stone DA, Paciorek CJ, Collins WD (2017) Diagnosing conditional anthropogenic contributions to heavy Colorado rainfall in September 2013. Weather Climate Extremes 17:1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2017.03.004
Parton W, Morgan J, Smith D, Del Grosso S, Prihodko L, LeCain D, Kelly R, Lutz S (2012) Impact of precipitation dynamics on net ecosystem productivity. Glob Change Biol 18:915–927. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02611.x
Pau G, Fuchs F, Sklyar O, Boutros M, Huber W (2010) EBImage–an R package for image processing with applications to cellular phenotypes. Bioinformatics 26:979–981. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btq046
Post AK, Knapp AK (2019) Plant growth and aboveground production respond differently to late-season deluges in a semi-arid grassland. Oecologia 191:673–683. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-019-04515-9
Post AK, Knapp AK (2020) The importance of extreme rainfall events and their timing in a semi-arid grassland. J Ecol 108:2431–2443. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13478
Post AK, Knapp AK (2021) How big is big enough? Surprising responses of a semiarid grassland to increasing deluge size. Glob Change Biol 27:1157–1169. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15479
Post AK, Hufkens K, Richardson AD (2022) Predicting spring green-up across diverse North American grasslands. Agric For Meteorol 327:109204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2022.109204
Poulter B, Frank D, Ciais P, Myneni RB, Andela N, Bi J, Broquet G, Canadell JG, Chevallier F, Liu YY, Running SW, Sitch S, van der Werf GR (2014) Contribution of semi-arid ecosystems to interannual variability of the global carbon cycle. Nature 509:600–603. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13376
Prevéy JS, Seastedt TR (2014) Seasonality of precipitation interacts with exotic species to alter composition and phenology of a semi-arid grassland. J Ecol 102:1549–1561. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.12320
R Core Team (2022) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/
Sala OE, Lauenroth WK, Parton WJ (1992) Long-term soil water dynamics in the shortgrass steppe. Ecology 73:1175–1181. https://doi.org/10.2307/1940667
Sala OE, Gherardi LA, Reichmann L, Jobbágy E, Peters D (2012) Legacies of precipitation fluctuations on primary production: theory and data synthesis. Phil Trans R Soc B 367:3135–3144. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0347
Schwieger S, Blume-Werry G, Peters B, Smiljanić M, Kreyling J (2019) Patterns and drivers in spring and autumn phenology differ above- and belowground in four ecosystems under the same macroclimatic conditions. Plant Soil 445:217–229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-019-04300-w
Seyednasrollah B, Young AM, Hufkens K, Milliman T, Friedl MA, Frolking S, Richardson AD (2019) Tracking vegetation phenology across diverse biomes using Version 2.0 of the PhenoCam Dataset. Sci Data 6:222. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0229-9
Sillmann J, Kharin VV, Zwiers FW, Zhang X, Bronaugh D (2013) Climate extremes indices in the CMIP5 multimodel ensemble: Part 2. Future climate projections. J Geophys Res Atmos 118:2473–2493. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgrd.50188
Steinaker DF, Wilson SD (2008) Phenology of fine roots and leaves in forest and grassland. J Ecol 96:1222–1229. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2745.2008.01439.x
Steinaker DF, Wilson SD, Peltzer DA (2009) Asynchronicity in root and shoot phenology in grasses and woody plants: root phenology: grasses and woody plants. Glob Change Biol 16:2241–2251. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.02065.x
Trenberth KE, Fasullo JT, Shepherd TG (2015) Attribution of climate extreme events. Nat Clim Change 5:725–730. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2657
White ER, Hastings A (2020) Seasonality in ecology: Progress and prospects in theory. Ecol Complex 44:100867. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecocom.2020.100867
Winslow JC, Hunt ER, Piper SC (2003) The influence of seasonal water availability on global C3 versus C4 grassland biomass and its implications for climate change research. Ecol Model 163:153–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3800(02)00415-5
Zscheischler J, Westra S, van den Hurk BJJM, Seneviratne SI, Ward PJ, Pitman A, AghaKouchak A, Bresch DN, Leonard M, Wahl T, Zhang X (2018) Future climate risk from compound events. Nature Clim Change 8:469–477. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0156-3
Acknowledgements
We thank Benjamin Pauletto and Ian Richardson for their help with data collection. We also thank the USDA–ARS Central Plains Experimental Range for providing the space and logistical support with extra thanks to Melissa Johnston.
Funding
This work was partially supported by the Stavros Family Fund from the Department of Biology at Colorado State University, the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University, and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Award (NIFA #2018-67019-27849, #2022-67019-36367).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
OLH and AKK conceived and designed the experiment. OLH conducted the fieldwork and analyzed the data. OLH wrote the initial manuscript draft, and AKK edited and provided comments on subsequent drafts.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Communicated by Louis Stephen Santiago.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Hajek, O.L., Knapp, A.K. Signatures of autumn deluges revealed during spring drought in a semi-arid grassland. Oecologia 204, 83–93 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-023-05488-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-023-05488-6