Climate Change and Grassland Ecosystem Management

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Grassland and Pasture Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2023) | Viewed by 3202

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. College of Grassland Science, Shanxi Agricultural University, Minxian No.1, Jinzhong 030801, China
2. Key Laboratory for Model Innovation in Forage Production Efficiency, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Jinzhong, China
Interests: grassland management

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Grassland Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hohhot, China
Interests: grassland ecology

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
College of Grassland Science, Shanxi Agricultural University, Minxian No.1, Jinzhong 030801, China
Interests: grassland eco-economics and management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The global climate has changed dramatically over the past century, leading to higher temperatures, more uncertainty in precipitation, and more extreme disasters. In different grassland types around the world, climate change has a significant impact on grassland production and ecosystem functioning. Currently, therefore, climate change is one of the important challenges for grassland ecosystems. To meet this challenge, grassland ecosystems need appropriate management practices to instigate changes in climate factors, including increased temperatures, fluctuating precipitation, and extreme droughts.

In this Special Issue, we intend to exchange knowledge on climate change and grassland ecosystem management, thus increasing our understanding of grassland response mechanisms under climate change and promoting adaptation to climate hazards.

This Special Issue welcomes many forms of research, such as original research, reviews, or meta-analysis papers. The themes of this Special Issue mainly include, but are not limited to:

  1. The characteristics of climate change in grassland regions;
  2. Plant, soil, and microorganisms in response to climate factors;
  3. Natural grassland ecosystem management under climate change;
  4. Artificial grassland management under climate change;
  5. Grassland management evaluation and optimization strategies.

Prof. Dr. Xiangyang Hou
Dr. Xiliang Li 
Dr. Yanting Yin
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. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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

  • climate change
  • global warming
  • precipitation variation
  • extreme climate
  • grassland ecosystem
  • adaptation strategies

Published Papers (2 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

13 pages, 1790 KiB  
Article
Responses of Soil Enzyme Activity to Long-Term Nitrogen Enrichment and Water Addition in a Typical Steppe
by Jinbao Zhang, Ke Jin, Yonghong Luo, Lan Du, Ru Tian, Shan Wang, Yan Shen, Jiatao Zhang, Na Li, Wenqian Shao and Zhuwen Xu
Agronomy 2023, 13(7), 1920; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13071920 - 20 Jul 2023
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 1509
Abstract
Enzyme activity plays an important role in soil biochemical processes and is a key factor driving nutrient cycling. Although a great number of studies examined the effects of nitrogen (N) enrichment and water (W) addition on soil enzyme activity, most of them focused [...] Read more.
Enzyme activity plays an important role in soil biochemical processes and is a key factor driving nutrient cycling. Although a great number of studies examined the effects of nitrogen (N) enrichment and water (W) addition on soil enzyme activity, most of them focused on the effect of only one resource and are based on short-term investigations. The separate and interactive effects of long-term changes in nitrogen and water on soil enzyme activity remain largely unexplored. In this study, we demonstrated the responses of two types of soil enzyme, β-1,4-glucosidase (BG) and acid phosphatase (APA), to increased nitrogen and water based on a 16-year experiment conducted in a typical grassland in northern China. The results show that: (1) nitrogen addition inhibited BG and APA in 2019 and 2020; (2) water addition had no significant effect on BG activity, but significantly reduced APA activity in 2020; and (3) redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that nitrogen and water addition affected soil enzyme activity mainly by affecting soil microbial biomass carbon (MBC). The present research offers a comprehensive explanation of how atmospheric nitrogen deposition and precipitation patterns affect the characteristics of microorganisms and the cycling of nutrients in grassland ecosystems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Grassland Ecosystem Management)
Show Figures

Figure 1

22 pages, 3852 KiB  
Article
Comprehensive Evaluation of Ecological Functional Traits and Screening of Key Indicators of Leymus chinensis Germplasm Resources from Northern China and Mongolia
by Na Liu, Fenghui Guo, Bin Li, Zeyao Jing, Wuyun Bai and Xiangyang Hou
Agronomy 2023, 13(7), 1880; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13071880 - 17 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1140
Abstract
Leymus chinensis is important for ecological restoration and stock farming in Eurasia. In the context of climate change, excavating L. chinensis germplasm resources with excellent ecological functional traits is important to resist grassland degradation and promote the restoration of degraded grassland ecosystems. In [...] Read more.
Leymus chinensis is important for ecological restoration and stock farming in Eurasia. In the context of climate change, excavating L. chinensis germplasm resources with excellent ecological functional traits is important to resist grassland degradation and promote the restoration of degraded grassland ecosystems. In this study, we used 42 L. chinensis germplasm resources (LC01–LC42) from different geographical sources to perform a multidimensional comprehensive evaluation of drought tolerance, rhizome space expansion, and soil improvement abilities. (1) LC07, LC15, LC18, and LC19 exhibited excellent ecological functional traits and could be used in breeding for ecological restoration. They were mainly from eastern and central Mongolia and central Inner Mongolia. (2) Principal component analysis showed that eight principal components with eigenvalues ≥1 were extracted from 26 traits of L. chinensis. The cumulative contribution rate was 80.551%. (3) There was a significant positive correlation between the F value and longitude and a significant negative correlation of the F value with latitude. L. chinensis germplasms from high longitudes and low altitudes may exhibit better comprehensive performance. (4) Plant height, leaf number, tiller number, malonaldehyde, chlorophyll content, dry weight on the ground, maximum one-direction extended distance, and organic matter can be used as key indices to comprehensively evaluate L. chinensis germplasm resources. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Grassland Ecosystem Management)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop