X.W. Guo

• PHD
• Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Alpine meadows of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) are experiencing severe degradation due to intensified human activity and climate changes. However, there has been little attention paid to the effects of grazing practices on the soil-hydrological properties of degraded alpine meadows. In this study, three grazing practices were established in an...

Grassland degradation poses a significant challenge to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP). Effective monitoring of grassland degradation is essential for ecological restoration. Hyperspectral technology offers efficient and accurate identification of degradation. However, the influence of observa...

Drought is projected to intensify under warming climate and will continuously threaten global food security. Assessing the risk of yield loss due to drought is key to developing effective agronomic options for farmers and policymakers. However, little has been known about determining the likelihood of reduced crop yield under different drought cond...

Quantifying the elevation dependency of radiation partitioning in high‐altitude mountains is crucial for projecting regional energy balance while remains highly uncertain. We compared the surface radiation partitioning parameters across a meadow (3,200 m), shrub (3,400 m), and forb (3,600 m) along a southern slope of the Qilian Mountains. At a dail...

Aim Chronic directional climate changes in temperature and precipitation are predicted to increase the frequency of extreme climatic events (ECEs); however, their co‐occurring effects on the temporal stability of community productivity (i.e. ANPP stability) are still unclear. Here, we evaluate whether the increased frequency of ECEs reduces ANPP st...

Alkaline deserts soils acted as important soil pools in arid and semiarid regions. Contents of soil organic carbon (SOC) and its driven factors remained still not clear in alpine deserts on the Tibetan Plateau. In this study, we analyzed 223 soil organic carbon contents and total nitrogen and pH values, and its space distribution pattern under 0-30...

Glomalin-related soil protein (GRSP) is a recalcitrant glycoprotein mainly produced by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and contributes to soil carbon sequestration. Human activities (grazing, fertilization, etc.) can change plant productivity, soil carbon pool, and microbial community in an alpine grassland ecosystem. However, no study has reported on...

Water use efficiency is an important indicator of drought tolerance of plants. The response was still unclear of water use efficiency to different grazing intensity and its adaptive mechanisms in alpine meadow. Here, we analyzed water use efficiency of plant dominant species, coexisting species and functional group level plants to grazing intensity...

Biocrust is a key component of ecosystems and plays a vital role in altering hydrological processes in terrestrial ecosystems. The impacts of biocrust on hydrological processes in arid and semi-arid ecosystems have been widely documented. However, the effects and mechanisms of biocrust on soil hydrological processes in alpine ecosystems are still p...

Linked climate and crop simulation models are widely used to assess the impact of climate change on agriculture. However, it is unclear how ensemble configurations (model composition and size) influence crop yield projections and uncertainty. Here, we investigate the influences of ensemble configurations on crop yield projections and modeling uncer...

The dew is closely related to the micro-use water of plants and the large-scale hydrological processes, its formation on grassland plays a vital role especially in maintaining the eco-hydrological cycle. We used structural equation modelling to investigate how environmental factors would affect dew formation on alpine graminoid-Kobresia meadow in n...

Alpine shrub meadows hold significant importance as grassland ecosystems on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). They provide a range of vital ecosystem services (ESs) and are commonly utilized as summer pastures by herders, resulting in short grazing periods and high grazing intensities. Unfortunately, these practices have led to varying degrees of...

Grazing is the most important disturbance to grasslands, especially on the Tibetan Plateau, which sustains the livelihoods of tens of thousands of herders. However, the effects of grazing intensity and associated changes in vegetation on freeze-thaw processes (FTPs) in seasonal permafrost regions remain unclear. Here, two years of continuous in sit...

Discrete extreme heat events, deluges, and droughts will become more frequent and disproportionately affect the processes and functions of grassland ecosystems. Here, we compared the responses of CO2 and heat fluxes to natural extreme events in 2016 in a lower alpine meadow and neighboring upper shrubland on the northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau...

Covering an area of 5.04×105 km2 on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Alpine meadow is essential to the plateau ecological barrier function and regional sustainable development. Since May 2014, Haibei National Field Research Station for Alpine Grassland (Haibei Station hereafter) has been accumulating amounts of valuable data by employing eddy covarianc...

Biocrust is a key component of ecosystems and plays a vital role in altering hydrological processes in terrestrial ecosystems. The role of biocrust on hydrological properties in arid and semi-arid ecosystems has been widely documented; however, the effects and mechanisms of biocrust on soil hydrological properties in alpine ecosystems are still poo...

One of the challenges of managing grasslands sustainably is the conflict between the different ecosystem services they provide. This is especially evident in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) region, where fragile alpine ecosystems make balancing the needs of grassland conservation and development difficult. However, our current understanding of th...

The structure and function of plant communities in alpine meadow ecosystems are potentially susceptible to climate warming. Here, we utilized a unique field manipulation experiment in an alpine meadow on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and investigated the responses of plant species diversity, composition, biomass, and net primary productivity (NPP) at...

Dew is closely related to the micro-use of water and to large-scale hydrological processes. Dew formation on grasslands plays a particularly vital role in maintaining the ecohydrological cycle, however, its characteristics and sources were rarely reported. Here, stable isotope for dew, ambient water vapor, soil water, plant water, creek water, and...

The alpine grassland shrubbization of the northern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau on the background of global change and overgrazing, is a prominent and serious problem. However, the water competition ability of shrubs and alpine grasslands is rarely reported. Here, we tracked the δ O and δ H of soil water, plant water, precipitation, and groundwater, analy...

Slope aspect plays a vital role in hydrological processes by regulating soil physicochemical properties; however, its influencing mechanisms and effects on soil hydrological properties are poorly understood, especially in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP). In this study, two slope aspects, i.e. south-facing (SF) and north-facing (NF), were selected...

Dew is closely related to the micro-use of water and to large-scale hydrological processes. Dew formation on grasslands plays a particularly vital role in maintaining the ecohydrological cycle. Stable isotope information for dew, ambient water vapor, soil water, plant water, creek water, and precipitation were tracked to determine the role of dew i...

Soil moisture dynamics play an active role in ecological and hydrological processes. Although the variation of the soil water moisture of multiple ecosystems have been well-documented, few studies have focused on soil hydrological properties by using a drying and weighing method in a long time series basis in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). In thi...

Emerging evidence emphasizes the functional impacts of host microbiome on the etiopathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, there are limited mechanistic insights into the contribution of microbial biomolecules especially microbial peptides toward modulating immune homeostasis. Here, by mining the metagenomi...

Micro-patches are the basic unit of grazing ecosystems; the characteristics of these micro-patches are relatively stable in species under different grazing intensities in the same vegetation, but obviously different in terms of the distribution pattern. This leads to differentiation of plant community numerical characteristics under different grazi...

The effects of climate change on permafrost have been well documented in many studies, whereas the effect of climate change on seasonally frozen ground (SFG) is still poorly understood. We used the observed daily freeze depth of SFG and environmental factors data from the period 2007–2016 to examine the seasonal and inter-annual variation of SFG. W...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2022.854196.].

Evapotranspiration is a key component in the terrestrial water cycle, and accurate evapotranspiration estimates are critical for water irrigation management. Although many applicable evapotranspiration models have been developed, they are largely focused on low-altitude regions, with less attention given to alpine ecosystems. In this study, we eval...

An understanding of soil moisture conditions is crucial for hydrological modeling and hydrological processes. However, few studies have compared the differences between the dynamics of soil moisture content and soil moisture response to precipitation infiltration under different types of vegetation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). In this study,...

Studying the interrelation of soil water and plant water is essential for an in-depth understanding of eco-hydrological processes. However, water use relationships and comparative studies between shrubs and alpine grassland of the northern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau remain poorly understood. In this study, we compared δ18O and δ2H values of water from s...

The impacts of human-driven environmental changes on the stability of natural grasslands have been assessed by comparing differences between manipulative warming and grazing plots and reference plots. However, little is known about whether or how ambient climate regulates the effects of manipulative treatments. A 36-year observational dataset shows...

The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) has an important function in ensuring the water ecological security of China, even Asia, and the soil water storage of alpine grassland is an important part of the ecosystem water. Grassland degradation directly affects the soil water storage capacity. However, the impact of degradation on specific soil storage capac...

Grassland degradation has been one of the major ecological concerns on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) in recent years, but the degradation of alpine shrub meadows, and in particular the changes in its surface landscape pattern, has been less well assessed. This study selected a warm-season pasture on the QTP as a study area, and used an unmanned a...

Alpine shrub-meadow is an important ecosystem type on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, providing a variety of ecosystem services while supporting the livelihoods of pastoralists. However, there is a clear lack of understanding of the changes in spatial patterns and ecosystem services of alpine shrub-meadow degradation. This study combined aerial photog...

Alpine grassland has very important water conservation function. Grassland degradation seriously affects the water conservation function; moreover, there is little understanding of the change of water state during grassland restoration. Our study aims to bridge this gap and improve our understanding of changes in soil moisture during the restoratio...

Water use efficiency is an important indicator of drought tolerance in plants. The response of the water use efficiency to different grazing intensities and adaptive mechanisms in alpine meadows remains unclear. To understand the changes in water use in alpine meadow ecosystems under different grazing gradients, grazing systems have to be optimized...

In recent decades, alpine grassland has been seriously degraded owing to overgrazing across the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau (QTP), although grazing exclusion has been widely adopted to restore degraded QTP grassland. It remains unknown whether such management approach is effective for all degraded alpine grasslands, and the effect of different grazing...

Soil water retention capacity is an essential component of the land surface processes and hydrological cycles. Although the effect of grassland degradation on soil water retention capacity have been well documented, few studies have focused on how soil hydrological properties vary between different vegetation types on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP...

Soil seepage is an important component used for quantifying hydrological processes that remains unclear in high-altitude alpine meadows. Shallow soil seepage was continuously measured using an auto-logged micro-lysimeter (diameter = 30 cm, depth = 30 cm) from July 2018 to June 2019 in a piedmont summer pasture of alpine meadow on the Northeastern Q...

In Australia, the proportion of forest area that burns in a typical fire season is less than for other vegetation types. However, the 2019−2020 austral spring-summer was an exception, with over four times the previous maximum area burnt in southeast Australian temperate forests. Temperate forest fires have extensive socio-economic, human health, gr...

Grassland ecosystem functions are affected to a large extent by grazing activities. However, owing to the associated spatial heterogeneity, the influence of grazing intensity on grassland ecosystem biomass and the underlying mechanisms remains unclear. In this study, we analyzed data from 335 field data to clarify the response of grassland ecosyste...

Field studies have tested the effectiveness of nitrification inhibitors in reducing grassland soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. However, the magnitude of the effects on N2O emission rates across global grasslands remains unclear owing to its spatial heterogeneity. In this study, we synthesized 40 datasets from 23 published studies. The meta-analy...

Grazing alters the plant communities, soil properties, and habitat conditions of the alpine grassland. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are involved in the nutrient cycling of grassland ecosystems and form a mutual symbiosis with their host plants. Thus, AMF are sensitive to the impact of livestock grazing. However, the effects of grazing intensi...

Changes in ecological processes over time in ambient treatments are often larger than the responses to manipulative treatments in climate change experiments. However, the impacts of human‐driven environmental changes on the stability of natural grasslands have been typically assessed by comparing differences between manipulative plots and reference...

Grassland management is one of the most important means to address grassland degradation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, but at present, the primary goal is still to improve grassland productivity, and little research has been conducted on grassland management based on its ecosystem service relationships. Based on remote sensing and meteorological da...

Alpine grasslands play important functions in mitigating climate change and regulating water resources. However, the spatiotemporal variability of their carbon and water budgets remains unquantified. Here, 47 site-year observations of CO2 and water vapor fluxes (ET) are analyzed at sites situated along a hydrothermal gradient across the Qinghai-Tib...

The soil seepage is an important component for quantifying hydrological processes while remains unclear in high-altitude alpine meadows. The shallow soil seepage was continuously measured by an auto-logged micro-lysimeter (diameter = 30 cm, depth = 30 cm) from July 2018 to June 2019 in a piedmont summer pasture of alpine meadow on the Northeastern...

Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in grasslands contribute considerably to global warming and are influenced substantially by nitrogen deposition. However, the impacts of N deposition impact on soil N2O emission rates across global grassland remain unclear due to spatial heterogeneity. Here, we synthesized data from 34 published studies to clarify the...

Alpine regions are generally referred to as water towers for the lowlands, yet the water balance has not been quantified for alpine catchments with different vegetation types. This paper presented a multi-year time series of evapotranspiration (ET) and water supply (precipitation minus ET) during the warm-season (June to September), measured using...

The accurate estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) is essential for assessing water availability and requirements of regional‐scale terrestrial ecosystems, and for understanding the hydrological cycle in alpine ecosystems. In this study, two large‐scale weighing lysimeters were employed to estimate the magnitude and dynamics of actual evapotranspir...

Background and aimsIn recent decades, an increasing proportion of alpine shrub meadow has become severely degraded owing to the combined effects of global climate warming and rodent infestation, with significant impacts on soil water retention. The present paper investigates the patterns and controlling factors of soil water retention of alpine shr...

Grazing management is known to be one of the most important strategies for regulating plant community structure and soil carbon and nitrogen content for alpine meadows, but very few studies about the effect of long-term grazing management on soil and plant characteristics. In this study, biomass and soil samples were collected during the grazing an...

The methane (CH4) fluxes in grasslands are sensitive to changes in precipitation and soil nitrogen concentrations, which was poorly understood, especially on the Tibetan Plateau. Therefore, an experiment was conducted from May 2012 to October 2013, by using the static chamber technique and gas chromatography method. We set up five treatments: an in...

Alpine meadow degradation has become serious in recent decades due to the combined effects of overgrazing, human activities and rodents, but very few studies focus on the possible impact of alpine meadow degradation on soil water retention on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In this study, four degradation stages (non-degradation, ND; light degradation,...

The response of grassland soil bacterial community characteristics to different grazing intensities is central ecological topics. However, the underlying mechanisms between bacterial abundance, diversity index, and grazing intensity remain unclear. We measured alpine meadow soil bacterial gene richness and diversity index under four grazing intensi...

Root trait dynamics can reflect the adjustment in the strategy of plant roots in resource acquisition and energy storage when responding to climatic fluctuations. Under global change, the responses of root traits in climate sensitive ecosystems, e.g. high-elevation and cold Alpine ecosystems, remain unclear. To identify how climatic fluctuations dr...

Treatment with nitrification inhibitors, such as dicyandiamide (DCD) and 3,4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP) have been strongly indicated to increase grassland biomass and mitigate soil N2O emission rates. However, the responses of both alpine meadow aboveground biomass and N2O emission rates to nitrification inhibitors remains unclear. We separa...

The degradation of alpine grasslands directly affects their ability to conserve water, but changes in soil water storage in grassland under different degrees of degradation are poorly understood. Here, we selected four grassland plots along a degradation gradient: no-degradation grassland (NG), lightly degraded grassland (LG), moderately degraded g...

Aboveground biomass (AGB) and belowground biomass (BGB) allocation and productivity–richness relationship are controversial. Here, we assessed AGB and BGB allocation and the productivity–richness relationship at community level across four grassland types based on the biomass data collected from 80 sites across the Qinghai Plateau during 2011–2012....

Soil and community characteristics, and their driving factors, were poorly understood in terms of grazing intensity in alpine meadow regions on the Tibetan plateau. We investigated the soil properties and plant communities between areas with long-term light grazing (LG), medium grazing (MG), and high grazing (HG) intensities. It was revealed that g...

Grazing is an important modulator of both plant productivity and biodiversity in grassland community, yet how to determine a suitable grazing intensity in alpine grassland is still controversy. Here, we explore the effects of different grazing intensities on plant biomass and species composition, both at community level and functional group level,...

Net primary production (NPP) is a fundamental property of natural ecosystems. Understanding the temporal variations of NPP could provide new insights into the responses of communities to environmental factors. However, few studies based on long‐term field biomass measurements have directly addressed this subject in the unique environment of the Qin...

Over the past few decades, natural reserves have been affected by both climate change and human activities, and their land cover has changed dramatically, especially in mountain reserves, which are more sensitive to climate change and human activities. This paper used long-term Landsat and MODIS NDVI remote sensing data to monitor the changes of la...

The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) is particularly sensitive to global climate change, especially to elevated temperatures, when compared with other ecosystems. However, few studies use long‐term field measurements to explore the interannual variations in plant biomass under climate fluctuations. Here, we examine the interannual variations of plant bi...

Grasslands are suffering from long-term overgrazing because of the population inflation. Furthermore, nitrous oxide (N2O) is a major greenhouse gas that also depletes stratospheric ozone. However, the emission rate of grassland N2O and underlying mechanisms remained unclear under different grazing intensities. We conducted a field manipulation unde...

The freeze-thaw cycle in the active soil layer plays a crucial role in cold-region hydrological processes, yet the effect of vertical water migration caused by the soil frost on shallow groundwater remains poorly quantified. The shallow groundwater level (GWL), soil frost depth and main environmental controls were monitored in a humid alpine meadow...

Alpine grassland ecosystems are thought to be the most sensitive ecosystems to climate change, yet the responses of their belowground biomass and potential climatic controls are poorly understood. Thirteen‐year (2004 ‐ 2016) time‐series of observational belowground biomass data and environmental factors were analysed in a humid alpine Kobresia mead...

Mapping the soil organic carbon (SOC) properties of terrestrial ecosystems is necessary to mitigate carbon flux. Here, we quantified grassland SOC contents and densities to evaluate the potential for increased storage through recovery on the Qinghai Plateau. The SOC contents of 41 paired soil profiles from areas of nondegraded and degraded grasslan...

The 4-Hydroxybenzoic acid (4-HBA) is one of the major autotoxins in grapevine soil. This study aimed to identify the bacteria involved in the metabolism of 4-HBA in grapevine rhizosphere soil. Grapevine rhizosphere soil was collected and treated at an interval of 48 h with 4-HBA (unlabelled or¹³C labelled) doses of 0, 5, 50 and 500 µg·g⁻¹ dry soil....

Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is the highest and largest plateau on earth, and almost 60% of its area is occupied by natural alpine grassland (alpine steppe and meadow). Owing to its unique climatic conditions, together with little human disturbance, it provides a unique opportunity to test the above- and belowground biomass allocation patterns and its r...

The Qinghai‐Tibet plateau (QTP) has the world’s largest area of seasonally frozen ground. Here, shallow groundwater displays behavior that is distinct from that elsewhere in the world. In the present study, we explore the seasonal and interannual variation of the shallow groundwater levels from 2012 to 2016, and attempt to quantitatively evaluate t...

Frequent EI Niño events have worldwide impacts, but their effects on carbon and water budgets in alpine grasslands have been poorly explored. The responses of carbon and water vapor exchanges, monitored by the eddy covariance techniques, to the strongest EI Niño event in 2015/2016 were investigated over a humid alpine meadow on the Northeastern Qin...

Accurately quantifying evapotranspiration (ET) is crucial to fully understanding regional water resource management and potential feedbacks to climate change in alpine grasslands. The quantitative relationships between ET and environmental controls were investigated by a continuous eddy covariance dataset from June 2014 to December 2016 over an alp...

The mechanisms underlying the retention of inorganic N were still not well understood in an alpine meadow on the Tibetan Plateau as well as in other high-altitude meadow sites greatly grazed and disturbed. We conducted field soil and dominant species foliar nitrogen natural abundance of stable isotope ratios (δ¹⁵N) under four grazing intensities. I...

The effect of livestock grazing on grassland degradation and the resulting impact on soil carbon concentration is an important factor in carbon estimation. We addressed this issue using field observations and laboratory analysis of samples from Tibetan grassland. Based on the field measurements, we investigated the soil organic carbon (SOC) and soi...

Soil surface resistance to vapor transfer is crucial for accurately estimating regional evapotranspiration while the studies of how to quantify the relationship between the soil surface resistance and soil temperature and soil moisture are still lack in alpine region. The dataset of soil evaporation measured by the eddy covariance technique over an...

Although 4-hydroxybenzoic acid (4-HBA) is a model allelochemical for many plants, its biotransformation is still unexplored. Sixty grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) rhizosphere soil samples (sterilized and non-sterilized) with 4-HBA (¹²C unlabeled or¹³C labeled) were analyzed at 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 6, 24, 50, and 68 h after incubation. Fourier transform i...

Accurate estimate of soil carbon storage is essential to reveal the role of soil in global carbon cycle. However, there is large uncertainty on the estimation of soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in grassland among previous studies, and the study on soil inorganic carbon (SIC) is still lack. We surveyed 153 sites during plant peak growing season an...

The alpine grassland ecosystem can sequester a large quantity of carbon, yet its significance remains controversial owing to large uncertainties in the relative contributions of climate factors and grazing intensity. In this study we surveyed 115 sites to measure ecosystem carbon storage (both biomass and soil) in alpine grassland over the Qinghai...

Description of 115 sites in alpine grassland biomes and carbon distribution across the Qinghai Plateau. Data comprise latitude, longitude, altitude, AGB, BGB, AGB carbon density, BGB carbon density and soil organic carbon density. (PDF)

In this study, we aimed at finding the genetic regularity of grape maturation period. Early-maturing grapevine, “87-1”, was used as the female parent and late-maturing, “9-22”, as the male parent, to create an F1 hybrid population. A total of 149 individual plants and their parents were selected as the mapping population. Sequence-related amplified...

In order to explore the correlation between soil microbial community function and plant growth, using 30-year continuous cropping soil of grapevines as research object, we studied the effects of sterilization of continuous cropping soil at different temperatures on the growth of grapevines and the microbial community function of rhizosphere soil. T...

The effects of nitrogen (N) addition and increased precipitation on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in alpine meadow ecosystems are still unclear. In this study, we measured N2O fluxes on the Tibetan plateau under interactions of moderate atmospheric N deposition and increased precipitation using a closed chamber method. Under all applied treatment c...

We used 4 typical community succession stages of Alpine Kobresia meadows where stock animals graze in late autumn, winter and early spring, to explore plant functional groups (PFG) characteristics responses to different grazing intensities. The grazing intensities include freedom grazing (according to the normal grazing intensity), reducing stock-...