Frontier in Grassland Ecosystem and Biodiversity

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 May 2022) | Viewed by 1719

Special Issue Editors

State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
Interests: biodiversity and ecosystem functioning; biodiversity maintenance mechanisms; grassland restoration and utilization; functional diversity
School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
Interests: effects of grassland diversity loss; degraded grassland restoration; grassland soil seed bank

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are inviting submissions to this Special Issue on “Frontiers in Grassland Ecosystems and Biodiversity”. As one of the most important and largest terrestrial ecosystems in the world, grasslands play vital roles in biodiversity maintenance, carbon sequestration, food supply, soil and water conservation, windbreak and sand fixation, etc., but grasslands are subject to varying degrees of degradation due to global climate change and human activity.

In this Special Issue, we invite submissions exploring:

1) Grassland ecosystem protection and sustainable utilization;

2) Grassland biodiversity maintenance mechanisms;

3) Effects and drivers of grassland biodiversity loss;

4) Relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning;

5) Relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem stability;

6) Grassland ecosystem structure and functions under global change;

7) Grassland ecosystem services;

8) Grassland ecosystem multifunctionality;

9) Degraded grassland restoration theories and technologies;

10) Grassland ecosystem adaptive management.

Prof. Dr. Wei Li
Dr. Xianhui Zhou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • grassland ecosystem
  • biodiversity maintenance
  • ecosystem structure and functioning
  • ecosystem stability
  • ecosystem multifunctionality
  • grassland restoration
  • grassland utilization
  • grassland management

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

12 pages, 1059 KiB  
Article
Resistance and Resilience of Nine Plant Species to Drought in Inner Mongolia Temperate Grasslands of Northern China
by Yuan Miao, Zhenxing Zhou, Meiguang Jiang, Huanhuan Song, Xinyu Yan, Panpan Liu, Minglu Ji, Shijie Han, Anqun Chen and Dong Wang
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(10), 4967; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12104967 - 14 May 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1421
Abstract
Drought has been approved to affect the process of terrestrial ecosystems from different organizational levels, including individual, community, and ecosystem levels; however, which traits play the dominant role in the resistance of plant to drought is still unclear. The experiment was conducted in [...] Read more.
Drought has been approved to affect the process of terrestrial ecosystems from different organizational levels, including individual, community, and ecosystem levels; however, which traits play the dominant role in the resistance of plant to drought is still unclear. The experiment was conducted in semi-arid temperate grassland and included six paired control and drought experimental plots. The drought treatment was completely removed from precipitation treatments from 20 June to 30 August 2013. At the end of the growing season in 2013, we removed the rain cover for ecosystem recovery in 2014. The results demonstrated that drought treatment increased the coverage of and abundance Heteropappus altaicus, Potentilla bifurca, and Artemisia scoparia by 126.2–170.0% and 63.4–98.9%, but decreased that of Artemisia frigida, Dontostemon dentatus, and Melissilus ruthenicu by 46.2–60.2% and 49.6–60.1%. No differences in coverage and abundance of Agropyron cristatum, Stipa kiylovii, and Cleistogenes squarrosa were found between control and drought treatment. The coverage and abundance of Stipa kiylovii have exceeded the original level before the drought stress, but Heteropappus altaicus still had not recovered in the first year after the disturbance. Our findings indicate that plant functional traits are important for the understanding of the resistance and resilience of plants to drought stress, which can provide data support for grassland management. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Frontier in Grassland Ecosystem and Biodiversity)
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