Journal Article

Heatwaves leave a legacy on a dominant understory grass in longleaf pine savanna

Green, Curtis E., Sabiston, Natalie C., Mann, William T., Shell, Ashli J., Young, Alyssa L., Johnson, Amber L., Mota, Stephanie, Winter, Jordan A., Koerner, Sally E., Araya, Daniel, Gora, Sarah L., Numan, Muhammad, Turner, Page A., Ligaba‐Osena, Ayalew, Ford, Jessica M., Bunch, Zachary L. T., Tuider, Fatuma J., Bloodworth, Kathryn J., Frost, Morgan Dyan Trimas, Allred, Gabriell A., Terry, Rosalie S., Glass, Eliza A., Reyes, Catalina, Russell, Stephanie L.

2025

Overview

The frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events such as heatwaves are predicted to increase under continued climate change and rising atmospheric CO2. Degraded and fragmented ecosystems are at particular risk of being greatly impacted by such extreme events. The longleaf pine (LLP) savanna ecosystem, once the dominant ecosystem throughout the Southeast Coastal Plains of the United States, has been reduced to a small percentage of its pre‐colonization range. While the effect of heatwaves on grassland systems has been well explored, less focus has been given to the legacy effects of previous climatic events. Through a greenhouse experiment using Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem), a dominant understory grass species in LLP savanna ecosystems, we aimed to study the legacy effects of heatwaves (i.e., higher temperatures and lower precipitation and humidity) across multiple plant performance metrics and stress responses. S. scoparium had a negative response to an early heatwave, showing increased mortality, smaller maximum leaf length, fewer leaves, decreased specific leaf area (SLA), decreased leaf thickness, and reduced belowground net primary productivity (NPP) when compared to plants that did not experience a heatwave. S. scoparium individuals exposed to a late heatwave had fewer leaves, reduced SLA, and thinner leaves when compared to plants that did not experience a heatwave. While plants exposed to both an early and late heatwave experienced an increase in some stress responses as observed by increased catalase activity and plant mortality, they exhibited no change in other stress responses studied (e.g., maximum leaf length, relative growth rate, productivity, leaf thickness, peroxidase levels, or fuel load). Overall, our study revealed that S. scoparium may show neutral‐to‐positive legacy effects in response to multiple heatwaves. This indicates that LLP savanna ecosystems dominated by S. scoparium may display resistance to the predicted increased frequency of heatwaves in the southeastern United States, an important outcome for the heavily degraded and endangered ecosystem.

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc,Wiley
• Subject: antioxidant enzyme activity / Biodiversity / Biomass / Business metrics / Carbon dioxide / catalase / Climate change / Coastal plains / drought / Ecosystems / endangered ecosystems / Experiments / fire–feedback loop / fuel loading / Grasses / Grasslands / greenhouse experimentation / Heat waves / High temperature / Humidity / leaf length / leaf thickness / Leaves / little bluestem / Load distribution / Mortality / net primary productivity / peroxidase / Pine trees / Pinus palustris / plant traits / primary productivity / risk / Savannahs / savannas / Schizachyrium scoparium / southeastern United States / species / specific leaf area / Temperature / Understory