One hundred and six years of change in a Sonoran Desert plant community: Impact of climate anomalies and trends in species sensitivities
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Author
Brown, C.Rodriguez, Buritica, S.
Goldberg, D.E.
Reichenbacher, F.
Venable, D.L.
Webb, R.H.
Wilder, B.T.
Affiliation
Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, University of ArizonaDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona
School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Arizona
Issue Date
2023-10-26Keywords
arid landsclimate anomaly
community structure
dominance
drought
extreme temperature
geographic range
growth form
long-term change
longevity
seasonal precipitation
species-specific response
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Ecological Society of AmericaCitation
Brown, Charlotte, Susana Rodriguez Buritica, Deborah E. Goldberg, Frank Reichenbacher, D. Lawrence Venable, Robert H. Webb, and Benjamin T. Wilder. 2024. “ One Hundred and Six Years of Change in a Sonoran Desert Plant Community: Impact of Climate Anomalies and Trends in Species Sensitivities.” Ecology 105(3): e4194. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4194Journal
EcologyRights
© 2023 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
A major restriction in predicting plant community response to future climate change is a lack of long-term data needed to properly assess species and community response to climate and identify a baseline to detect climate anomalies. Here, we use a 106-year dataset on a Sonoran Desert plant community to test the role of extreme temperature and precipitation anomalies on community dynamics at the decadal scale and over time. Additionally, we tested the climate sensitivity of 39 desert plant species and whether sensitivity was associated with growth form, longevity, geographic range, or local dominance. We found that desert plant communities had shifted directionally over the 106 years, but the climate had little influence on this directional change primarily due to nonlinear shifts in precipitation anomalies. Decadal-scale climate had the largest impact on species richness, species relative density, and total plant cover, explaining up to 26%, 45%, and 55% of the variance in each, respectively. Drought and the interaction between the frequency of freeze events and above-average summer precipitation were among the most influential climate factors. Increased drought frequency and wetter periods with frequent freeze events led to larger reductions in total plant cover, species richness, and the relative densities of dominant subshrubs Ambrosia deltoidea and Encelia farinosa. More than 80% of the tested species were sensitive to climate, but sensitivity was not associated with a species' local dominance, longevity, geographic range, or growth form. Some species appear to exhibit demographic buffering, where when they have a higher sensitivity to drought, they also tend to have a higher sensitivity to favorable (i.e., wetter and hotter) conditions. Overall, our results suggest that, while decadal-scale climate variation substantially impacts these desert plant communities, directional change in temperature over the last century has had little impact due to the relative importance of precipitation and drought. With projections of increased drought in this region, we may see reductions in total vegetation cover and species richness due to the loss of species, possibly through a breakdown in their ability to demographically buffer climatic variation, potentially changing community dynamics through a change in facilitative and competitive processes. © 2023 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.Note
Open access articleISSN
0012-9658DOI
10.1002/ecy.4194Version
Final Published Versionae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1002/ecy.4194
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2023 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.