Precipitation and local adaptation drive spatiotemporal variations of aboveground biomass and species richness in Tibetan alpine grasslands.

The Tibetan Plateau contains the highest and largest alpine pasture in the world, which is adapted to the cold and arid climate. It is challenging to understand how the vast alpine grasslands respond to climate change. We aim to test the hypothesis that there is local adaptation in elevational populations of major plant species in Tibetan alpine grasslands, and that the spatiotemporal variations of aboveground biomass (AGB) and species richness (S) can be mainly explained by climate change only when the effect of local adaptation is removed.

Effects of waterlogging on carbon assimilate partitioning in the Zoigê alpine wetlands revealed by 13CO2 pulse labeling.

Waterlogging has been suggested to affect carbon (C) turnover in wetlands, but how it affects C allocation and stocks remains unclear in alpine wetlands. Using in situ (13)CO2 pulse labelling, we investigated C allocation in both waterlogged and non-waterlogged sites in the Zoigê wetlands on the Tibetan Plateau in August 2011. More than 50% of total (13)C fixed by photosynthesis was lost via shoot respiration.