Testing biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship in the world’s largest grassland: overview of the IMGRE project
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The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) is a central topic in ecology on local, regional, and global scales. A powerful approach to BEF studies is large-scale field manipulative experimentation.
The Inner Mongolian Grassland Removal Experiment (IMGRE) was designed to examine the mechanisms of the BEF relationship in the world’s largest grassland, explicitly considering multiple trophic levels and grazing by grasshoppers and sheep.
IMGRE followed a randomized block design, with a total of 512 plots (6 m × 6 m each). The project involved massive field campaigns and laboratory analyses, and unprecedentedly employed two removal protocols in parallel: complete removal (eradicating all targeted functional types) and partial removal (an equal-disturbance removal scheme).
We summarize key findings on aboveground and belowground primary production, functional richness, identity, and composition, compensation at the species, PFT, and community levels, soil water and N retention, net N mineralization, microbial biomass, and grazing by grasshoppers and sheep. Comparing and contrasting results from the two removal protocols, we have found that the responses of ecosystem processes depend on plant functional richness and identity, as well as disturbance characteristics.
As part of the special issue on the ecological patterns and processes in the Inner Mongolian Plateau, this article provides an overview of the IMGRE project. The findings of this project shed new light on the BEF relationship in natural grasslands, and have important implications for ecosystem management in the Mongolian Plateau.
KeywordsBiodiversity and ecosystem functioning relationship BEF removal experiments Ecological stoichiometry Plant functional types Inner Mongolian grasslands
The IMGRE research was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF, DEB-0618193) as well as grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF, NSFC, or CAS. We thank all our collaborators and graduate students from both the Chinese and American institutions for their participation in the IMGRE project. Also, comments from two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated.
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