On April 29, 2019, the research results of Professor Wan Shiqiang's research group in the field of global change and plant phenology were published in Agricultural and with the title "Growth controls over flowering phenology response to climate change in three temperate steppes along a precipitation gradient" Published online on Forest Meteorology (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168192319301510). The first author of the research paper is Zhenxing Zhou, a doctoral student in the Global Change Ecology Laboratory, and the corresponding author is Professor Wan Shiqiang. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Key Program (31430015, 31830012).
Through a three-year (2015-2017) large-scale soil block transplantation experiment, this study revealed the response mechanism of plant phenology to climate change in three temperate grasslands in northern China under the current climate warming and rainfall pattern change scenarios. It was found that nighttime warming advanced the flowering time of desert steppe and typical grassland plants and delayed the flowering time of meadow steppe plants. In addition, the reduction and increase of rainfall showed opposite effects on the flowering phenology of the three grasslands, and this opposite effect was symmetrical. Further analysis showed that the response of plant phenology was mainly regulated by growth, followed by environmental factors. This study highlights the regulatory effect of plant growth on the reproductive phenology of temperate grasslands, and provides a mechanistic explanation for the response of plant phenology under the future climate change scenario.
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