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Responses to air temperature and soil moisture of growth of four dominant species on sand dunes of central Inner Mongolia

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Abstract

Little attention has been paid to how four dominant shrub species distributed in semi-arid areas respond to the combined effects of temperature and water supply. Seedlings of four species were grown in a glasshouse for eight weeks at air temperatures of 12.5/22.5, 15/25, 17.5/27.5, and 20/30°C (night/day) and with water supplies of 37.5, 75, 112.5, and 150 mm per month. When temperatures were 17.5/27.5 and 20/30°C relative growth rate (RGR) decreased for Artemisia ordosica, A. sphaerocephala, and Hedysarum laeve but not for Caragana korshinskii. RGR increased with increasing water availability for all four species and most treatments. In response to changing water availability, the RGR tended to correlate mainly with the physiological trait (net assimilation rate, NAR) and with dry matter allocation traits (below-ground to above-ground dry matter and leaf mass ratio). A higher ratio of below to above-ground dry matter for all four species under most treatments (0.3–1.7) and water-use efficiency (1.4–9.2 g kg−1) may explain how all four species survive drought. Higher temperatures may be harmful to A. ordosica and A. sphaerocephala, under current precipitation levels (average 75 mm per month from mid-June to mid-August). These findings support the proposal that A. ordosica mixed with C. korshinskii will prove optimal for re-vegetation of degraded areas of the Ordos plateau.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partly funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (30570327, 30671724), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2006BAD26B0201-1), the Global Environment Research Fund, the Ministry of the Environment, Japan, and the Field Station Foundation of Chinese Academy of Sciences. We are very grateful for the constructive comments of two anonymous referees and the editor (Professor Terashima), which improved this paper. The authors also appreciate Dr Yi Yu for his great support for this experiment. The National Institute for Environment Studies supplied all necessary equipment; this is deeply appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 20 Nanxincun, Xiangshan, 100093, Beijing, China

    Yuanrun Zheng & Guangsheng Zhou

  2. Office of Global Learning, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, 67260-0142, USA

    Glyn M. Rimmington

  3. Geosciences Department, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, 33431, USA

    Zhixiao Xie

  4. Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100080, Beijing, China

    Lei Zhang

  5. Arid Land Research Center, Tottori University, 1390 Hamasaka, Tottori, 680-0001, Japan

    Yuanrun Zheng, Ping An & Xiangjun Li

  6. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, 305-8506, Japan

    Yuanrun Zheng, Yunjiang Yu, Lijun Chen & Hideyuki Shimizu

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  1. Yuanrun Zheng
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  2. Glyn M. Rimmington
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Correspondence to Yuanrun Zheng.

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Zheng, Y., Rimmington, G.M., Xie, Z. et al. Responses to air temperature and soil moisture of growth of four dominant species on sand dunes of central Inner Mongolia. J Plant Res 121, 473–482 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-008-0172-x

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