Intense short-term drought is having a worse impact on the world’s grasslands than previously thought, a Jan. 12 news release from the University of Alberta (U of A) said. The U of A researchers were part of an international study.
The team of more than 170 researchers replicated drought conditions on grasslands and shrublands for one year at locations in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. The release noted that the findings showed a 60 per cent greater loss in plant growth, compared with more common historical droughts.
“What the finding tells us is that we have underestimated the impacts of short-term extreme drought on grassland systems,” Cameron Carlyle, a rangeland ecologist in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences and one of five U of A co-authors on the study, said in the release.
The finding is worrisome because short-term droughts — a year or less in duration — are becoming more common around the globe, he added.
“That is concerning because grassland plants drive important ecosystem services we depend on, like carbon sequestration.”
Besides sequestering less carbon, the grasslands could produce less forage for livestock producers around the world to feed their cattle, the release noted. The experiment also revealed that drier sites with less diverse plant life in places such as the southern United States and even parts of southern Alberta are likely to be the most vulnerable to extreme drought.
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