Laureano A. Gherardi

TL;DR: The results suggest that ANPP will respond to climate-change-driven alterations in water availability and, more importantly, that the magnitude of the response will increase with time.

TL;DR: The results indicated that total productivity and that of grasses declined in response to increased precipitation variability, although shrubs benefited, suggesting a potential shift from grassland to shrubland in the future, with large consequences for the supply of ecosystem services.

TL;DR: Policy and land management decisions related to global change scenarios should consider how ANPP and BNPP responses may differ, and that ecosystem responses to extreme events might not be predicted from relationships found under moderate environmental changes.

TL;DR: The results suggest that xeric grasslands are likely to exhibit the greatest responsiveness of community composition (richness and turnover) to predicted future increases in interannual precipitation variability, which is consistent with the idea that short-lived and less abundant species are more sensitive to interannually climate variability than longer- lived and more abundant species.

TL;DR: The importance of stability mechanisms varied along the environmental gradient: strong negative species covariance occurred in sites characterized by high precipitation variability, whereas portfolio effects increased in sites with high mean annual precipitation.