Different responses of alpine plants to natural climate change reduced coexistence through phenological niche overlap.

Plant phenology is the bridge between climate change and ecosystem functions. Time coordination of interspecific and intraspecific phenology changes overlap or separate can be regarded as an important characteristic of species coexistence. To confirm the hypothesis that plant phenological niche promotes species coexistence, three key alpine plants, Kobresia humilis (sedge), Stipa purpurea (grass), and Astragalus laxmannii (forb) were investigated in this study in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Air or soil temperature matters the responses of alpine plants in biomass accumulation to climate warming.

Climate change has substantially affected plant phenology and growth on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), while it remains unclear how plant phenology and growth impact the plant biomass under climate change. We used long-term data (from 1997 to 2017) for four plants, Stipa purpurea, Artemisia scoparia, Kobresia humilis and Astragalus laxmannii in the alpine meadow to examine the relationships among multiple climate factors, vegetative growth, reproductive growth, intrinsic growth rate and biomass. The order of returning to green determines the growth strategies of different plants, the earliest plants to green (p < 0.