Phase-dependent grassland temporal stability is mediated by species and functional group asynchrony: A long-term mowing experiment

The temporal stability of grasslands plays a key role in the stable provisioning of multiple ecosystem goods and services for humankind. Despite recent progress, our knowledge on how long-term mowing influences ecosystem stability remains unclear. Using a dataset from an 18-year-long mowing experiment with different treatment intensities (no-mowing, mowing once per year, and mowing twice per year) in grasslands of Inner Mongolia, China, we aimed to determine whether and how long-term mowing influenced grassland temporal stability in a temperate steppe. We found mowing decreased ecosystem stability in the early and intermediate periods (1-12 years of treatment), but increased stability in the later period (13-18 years of treatment), indicating responses of ecosystem stability to long-term mowing were phase dependent. Bivariate correlation and structural equation modeling analyses revealed that the degree of asynchrony both at the species and functional group levels, as well as dominant species stability, played key roles in stabilizing the whole community. In addition, portfolio effects rather than diversity made significant contributions to ecosystem stability. Our results suggest the phase-dependent temporal stability of grassland under long-term mowing is mainly mediated by species and functional group asynchrony. This finding provides a new insight for understanding how dryland grassland responds to long-term anthropogenic perturbations.