Global climate change is predicted to alter growing season rainfall patterns, potentially reducing total amounts of growing season precipitation and redistributing rainfall into fewer but larger individual events. Such changes may affect numerous soil, plant, and ecosystem properties in grasslands and ultimately impact their productivity and biological diversity. A five-year field study with regulated amount of precipitation was executed in different types of temperate grasslands (dry Festuca, wet Cirsium and Nardus grasslands) in three different regions (in lowland, highland and mountain, respectively) in the Czech Republic. Three simulated rainfall treatments were applied: reduced rainfall by 50% (dry), increased rainfall by 50% (wet), and natural rainfall of the current growing season (ambient). The addition of supplemental resources of water exhibited slightly positive relation with the above-ground production (AP), but statistically significant only in the lowland grassland. At all grasslands, both root biomass (RB) and total below-ground biomass (TBB) were significantly higher in wet compared to dry treatments. Significantly increased values of the TBB/AP ratios occurred only in the highland grassland due to enhanced rainfall. The opposite relations were found in lowland grassland where the TBB/AP ratio decreased in response to enhanced rainfall, though not significantly. In the mountain grassland, values of the TBB/AP ratios have shown less variability. The highland wet Cirsium grassland was more sensitive to altered rainfall regimes forming rather lower proportion of below-ground plant production.
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