Künzi, Yvonne (2025). Effects of drought severity on temperate grassland communities of different functional compositions. (Thesis). Universität Bern, Bern
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Abstract
Climate change is subjecting grasslands to increasingly severe droughts. Concurrently, land-use intensification has changed the composition of many temperate grasslands. Plant species diversity, resource acquisition strategy, which is often approximated for with the specific leaf area (SLA), and rooting depth are expected to influence drought responses of grasslands. However, it remains unclear, how the co-occurring land-use driven changes in these aspects of community composition collectively affect grassland resistance and resilience to increasingly severe drought. At the level of individual traits, it is still uncertain how SLA affects the ability of grassland species to resist and recover from increasingly severe droughts and if deep roots improve their drought performance. Functional traits like SLA can also respond to altered environmental conditions within species. Yet, it has remained unsolved how extensive drought affects the SLA of temperate grassland species, how such effects are related to plant performance under and after drought and how intraspecific SLA changes contribute to changes in SLA at the community level. In this thesis we addressed these open questions within the framework of a common garden field experiment. Despite severe adverse drought effects observed in the year of drought, we found high drought resilience of temperate grassland species and communities. We showed that land-use related differences in vegetation composition can modify the way in which communities respond to increasingly severe drought, irrespective of direct effects of fertilization or mowing regime, or differences in abiotic site conditions. Our results suggest that deep roots are beneficial for temperate grassland species during and after longer periods without precipitation. Moreover, we found that, both, at the level of species and communities, different ways can prove as successful in overcoming severe drought. This thesis contributed with a novel approach to grassland drought research and our results have important implications for grassland management and further research.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
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| Dissertation Type: | Cumulative |
| Date of Defense: | 20 May 2025 |
| Subjects: | 500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany) |
| Institute / Center: | 08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) |
| Depositing User: | Hammer Igor |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jan 2026 11:54 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Jan 2026 11:57 |
| URI: | https://boristheses.unibe.ch/id/eprint/7074 |
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