Abstract

All ecosystems will be impacted to some extent by climate change, with forecasts for more frequent and severe drought likely to have the greatest impact on terrestrial ecosystems. Terrestrial ecosystems are known to vary dramatically in their responses to drought. However, the mechanistic basis underlying why some ecosystems respond more than others represents a critical knowledge gap, one that limits our ability to project drought impacts at regional and continental scales. To effectively forecast terrestrial ecosystem responses to drought, ecologists must determine the mechanisms underlying ecosystem sensitivity to drought across a range of different ecosystem types, and then improve existing modeling frameworks by incorporating such variation within the context of broader environmental gradients. Traditional site-based approaches cannot provide this knowledge because site-specific experiments are conducted in ways that makes comparisons among ecosystems difficult.  Coordinated experimental networks, however, are ideally suited for comparative studies at regional to global scales.

Main Publications from this project

• Ravetta M.*, Bondaruk V., Oñatibia G.R., Loydi A., Pascual J., Peri P., Peter G., Oliva G., Ferrante D., Bruschetti C., Daleo P., Aguero W., Yahdjian L. 2025. Drought and plant invasions along an aridity gradient. Journal of Vegetation Science e70084 .DOI: 10.1111/jvs.70084.
• Ohlert T,, Smith M.D., Collins S.L., Knapp A., Dukes J, Munson S, Anderson M., ..Yahdjian L., DroughtNet CONSORTIUM, & Zuo X. 2025. Drought intensity and duration interact to magnify losses in primary productivity. Science 390,284-289(2025). DOI:10.1126/science.ads8144.
• Bondaruk V.*, Xu C., Wilfahrt P., Yahdjian L., Yu Q., Alberti J., … NPKD consortium. … Hautier Y. 2025. Aridity modulates grassland biomass responses to combined drought and nutrient addition. Nature Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02705-8.
• Smith M.D., Wilkins K., Holdrege M.C., Wilfahrt P., Collins S.L., Knapp A., Sala O.E., Dukes J, Phillips R., Yahdjian L., DroughtNet CONSORTIUM, & Sun W, 2024. Extreme drought impacts have been underestimated in grasslands and shrublands globally. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(4), e2309881120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2309881120.
• Toledo S., Bondaruk V.F., Yahdjian L., Oñatibia G.R., Loydi A., Alberti J., Bruschetti M., Pascual J., Peter G., Agüero W.D, Namur P.R., Blanco L., Peri P.L. 2023. Environmental factors regulate soil microbial attributes and their response to drought in rangeland ecosystems. Science of the Total Environment, 892,164406. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164406.
• Bondaruk V.F.*, Oñatibia G.R., Fernández R., Agüero W., Blanco L., Bruschetti C.M., Kröpfl A., Loydi A., Pascual J., Peri P., Peter G., Quiroga R. E., Yahdjian L. 2022. Forage provision is more affected by droughts in arid and semi-arid than in mesic rangelands. Journal of Applied Ecology, 59 (9) 2404-2418. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14243.
• Bondaruk V.*, Oñatibia G., Wilcox K., Yahdjian L. 2022. Standardized indices to estimate sensitivity to drought across ecosystems. Applied Vegetation Science 25, e12674. https://doi.org/10.1111/avsc.12674.