Enhanced aboveground biomass by increased precipitation in a central European grassland

Background:Global climate change is projected to increase temperature and alter precipitation pattern,which could affect grassland ecosystem.Long-term observation at a field experiment can be a powerful approach to explore the impacts of climate change on biomass productivity in grassland.In attempting to understand how climatic variability regulates biomass productivity,we analyzed long-term records of temperature and precipitation to examine how variation of temperature and precipitation across 19 years affect biomass productivity.Methods:We established the experiment with 64 plots in two blocks and planted 31 species in 30 different mixtures.We harvested aboveground biomass twice a year,sorted biomass by functional groups,and weighed dry biomass.The site was mown after each harvest.We did not apply any fertilizer and water.Using linear regression model,we examined the influences of growing season temperature and precipitation on biomass productivity.Results:The results showed that aboveground biomass productivity in September and annual were significantly increased in post-drought(2003–2015).The relationships of aboveground biomass productivity with growing season precipitation were significantly positive.The results showed that aboveground biomass productivity in June and annual were sensitive to growing season temperature.The relationships of aboveground biomass productivity of the functional group of grasses with early growing season temperature were significantly negative.Early growing season precipitation had a significant positive effect on aboveground biomass productivity of the functional groups of grasses and legumes.Post-drought aboveground biomass productivity of the functional groups of grasses in June and September were declined,whereas legumes significantly increased,which suggests that the role of dominant grasses may shift by legumes with global climate change.Conclusions:Our results highlight that early and late growing temperature and precipitation variability may reduce the aboveground biomass productivity in grassland.Our study implies that the combination of several functional groups is essential for the maintenance of stable productivity in temperate grassland ecosystem.

Predicting the effectiveness of protected areas of Natura 2000 under climate change

Background:Protected areas(PAs)are aimed to hold the environmental conditions that facilitate species and ecosystems to persist.PAs can become climatically unsuitable and unable to sustain their current number of species under climate change.The Natura 2000(N2K)is the largest coordinated conservation tool assigned to maintain the long-term survival of Europe’s most significant species and habitats.In attempting to understand the effectiveness of PAs in the face of climate change scenarios,we tested two hypotheses:(1)PAs in the Alpine and the Boreal biogeographical regions will experience more newly emerged climate conditions(hotter and drier)compared to the climate representation of other biogeographical regions under future climate in Europe and(2)PAs in the Mediterranean and the Continental biogeographical regions will face more consistency in climate conditions due to less area of disappearing and novel climate in future.Methods:Current climate data(1960–1990)and projections for 2050 and 2070 of PAs of N2K were extracted from WorldClim global climate data.Principal components analysis(PCA)was performed to construct climate space for the PAs across the biogeographical regions based on 19 climatic variables assessed at 5-km resolution.ArcMap 10.1 was used to map the location of the novel and disappearing climates.Results:PAs in the Alpine region will experience more novel climate conditions in the future compared to other biogeographical regions.The future projections showed that 17.70%of the PAs in the Alpine region will experience novel climate by 2070.Considerable climate consistency was observed in the PAs in the Continental region compared to the other biogeographical regions.Our results showed that about 176 km2 of the selected PAs in the Continental region will face new emerging climate,while about 110 km2 will disappear under RCP 8.5 scenario.The prediction also revealed that in the Mediterranean region 08 PAs will experience novel climate and 786 km2 areas in these PAs will face disappearing climate by 2070.We found that fewer areas of PAs in the Boreal regions will experience disappearing climate in both the scenarios.Conclusions:The portion of novel climate conditions can be seen as a future opportunity to assign new reserves for the species.Our study highlights the importance of conservation planning to increase the connectivity between PAs,identifying novel conservation zones to maximize representation of habitats during the emerging climatic changes as well as designing strategies,management,and monitoring of the individual PAs.

Correction to: Predicting the effectiveness of protected areas of Natura 2000 under climate change

Correction to:Ecol Process https://doi.org/10.1186/s13717-019-0168-6 In the original publication of this article(Nila and Hossain 2019),co-authors‘Carl Beierkuhnlein,Anja Jaeschke and Samuel Hoffmann’need to be added to the author list.Additionally,two parts of the Declarations section below need to be updated。