Direct and indirect drivers of plant diversity responses to climate and clipping across northern temperate grassland

It is well known that climate can influence plant community assembly via a multitude of indirect and direct pathways. However, interpretations of plant diversity responses to simulated climate change experiments, and subsequent predictions of plant communities under future climate scenarios, rarely address the importance of indirect effects. Networks of direct and indirect effects are also critical in understanding linkages between climate and grazing, a common land use of grasslands, and implications for plant diversity. We characterized the roles of indirect vs. direct effects in determining plant diversity responses to climate and grazing using data from three northern temperate grasslands in which we conducted factorial experiments manipulating precipitation, air temperature, and clipping intensity. Utilizing a structural equation modeling framework to address the multivariate networks, we found warming operated directly, causing species loss at all sites. We identified shoot biomass as the key indire...