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Global climate change models predict an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme droughts, with uncertain ecological impacts across ecosystems. In particular, it is not clear when extreme droughts will elicit extreme ecological responses.For this study, we employed three complementary approaches to explore the relationships between extreme drought and ecosystem responses. First, we used global data mining to evaluate the relationship between extreme gross primary productivity and extreme precipitation from 1980 to 2013. Second, we conducted a meta‐analysis using 132 drought experiments across the globe to assess the response ratios (RRs) of above‐ground net primary productivity (ANPP) to extreme versus non‐extreme drought treatments. Third, we examined community and ecosystem responses in an alpine meadow to a drought gradient experiment, which included five precipitation treatment levels (1/12 P, 1/4 P, 1/2 P, 3/4 P, and P, where P is the growing season precipitation).This study had three key results. In our historical data mining, we found that extreme droughts elicited extreme ecological responses only 15.1% of the time. The meta‐analysis results indicated that there were no significant differences in the RRs of ANPP between the extreme versus non‐extreme drought treatments. The drought gradient experiment results revealed that although the four drought treatments were statistically extreme, only the most extreme drought treatment (1/12 P) significantly reduced ANPP over the 3 years. Meanwhile, species richness and asynchrony were significantly reduced under the 1/12 P treatment, which led to a significant reduction in productivity.Synthesis. These results suggest that extreme ecological responses to extreme drought may be less frequent than previously thought. But when they do occur, extreme ecological responses may be driven by plant community changes such as species asynchrony, species loss or species reordering. Our experimental results highlight the key role of community dynamics in determining the resistance of ecosystem productivity to extreme drought, which should be assessed when predicting ecological responses to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in precipitation have the potential to cause dramatic changes in ecosystem carbon (C) cycling; however, it remains unclear whether different components of the net ecosystem exchange (NEE) (e.g., C uptake vs. release, plant vs. microbe respiration, above‐ground vs. below‐ground plant respiration) have similar or differential sensitivity to precipitation gradients.We conducted a manipulative field experiment (from 2015 to 2017) with six precipitation treatments, including 1/12 annual precipitation (P), 1/4 P, 1/2 P, 3/4 P, P and 5/4 P in an alpine meadow to investigate the responses of the NEE components.Over the 3 years, all C fluxes showed a nonlinear response to the precipitation gradients, except for root respiration. The most extreme drought treatment (1/12 P) caused strong reductions in NEE by 15.57%, gross primary productivity by 17.26% and ecosystem respiration by 19.05%, in contrast to the control. Plant respiration was more sensitive to precipitation change than microbe respiration, and above‐ground plant respiration was more susceptible than below‐ground respiration. Structural equation models revealed that the response of C fluxes under precipitation changes was primarily due to changes in the soil water content and above‐ground net primary productivity.Our findings indicate that future precipitation changes, particularly extreme drought, will decrease ecosystem C fluxes with different magnitudes, leading to a consequent reduction of NEE. These emergent ecosystem properties are essential for the improved elucidation of carbon cycle dynamics and benchmarking models, to predict ecosystem responses to precipitation changes. A plain language summary is available for this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate warming, often accompanied by extreme drought events, could have profound effects on both plant community structure and ecosystem functioning. However, how warming interacts with extreme drought to affect community‐ and ecosystem‐level stability remains a largely open question. Using data from a manipulative experiment with three warming treatments in an alpine meadow that experienced one extreme drought event, we investigated how warming modulates resistance and recovery of community structural and ecosystem functional stability in facing with extreme drought. We found warming decreased resistance and recovery of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and structural resistance but increased resistance and recovery of belowground net primary productivity (BNPP), overall net primary productivity (NPP), and structural recovery. The findings highlight the importance of jointly considering above‐ and belowground processes when evaluating ecosystem stability under global warming and extreme climate events. The stability of dominant species, rather than species richness and species asynchrony, was identified as a key predictor of ecosystem functional resistance and recovery, except for BNPP recovery. In addition, structural resistance of common species contributed strongly to the resistance changes in BNPP and NPP. Importantly, community structural resistance and recovery dominated the resistance and recovery of BNPP and NPP, but not for ANPP, suggesting the different mechanisms underlie the maintenance of stability of above‐ versus belowground productivity. This study is among the first to explain that warming modulates ecosystem stability in the face of extreme drought and lay stress on the need to investigate ecological stability at the community level for a more mechanistic understanding of ecosystem stability in response to climate extremes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency and severity of extreme weather events are increasing and expected to increase more in the future, together with global change. However, how extreme events and global change factors interactively influence community structures and ecosystem processes is largely unknown. Here, we investigated the responses of the temporal stability and resilience of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) of an alpine meadow to an extreme flooding event under different treatments of experimental drought and clipping. We found that ecosystems that were exposed to drought treatments for 3 years significantly decreased the temporal stability of community productivity but increased resilience to flooding, whereas their resistance to or recovery from flooding did not change. Neither clipping nor its interaction with drought altered the responses of these community stability metrics to flooding. Drought treatments significantly decreased plant species richness and asynchrony and dominant species stability, leading to a decrease in temporal stability and an increase in resilience in response to the extreme flooding event. The study also revealed that the change in species asynchrony was the dominant impact pathway determining the responses of resilience and temporal stability to flooding. Our results highlight that alpine grassland that experiences a multiyear drought may aggravate the instability of community productivity to extreme climatic events by reducing species asynchrony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]