Data from: Environmental changes drive the temporal stability of semi-arid natural grasslands through altering species asynchrony

Stability is an important property of ecological systems, many of which
are experiencing increasing levels of anthropogenic environmental changes.
However, how these environmental changes influence ecosystem stability
remains poorly understood. We conducted an 8-year field experiment in a
semi-arid natural grassland to explore the effects of two common
environmental changes, precipitation and nitrogen enrichment, on the
temporal stability of plant above-ground biomass. A split-plot design,
with precipitation as the main plot factor and nitrogen as the sub-plot
factor, was used. Temporal stability was related to potential explanatory
abiotic and biotic variables using regressions and structural equation
modelling. Increase in growing season precipitation enhanced plant species
richness and promoted temporal stability of plant above-ground biomass.
Nitrogen fertilization, however, reduced both plant species richness and
temporal stability of plant above-ground biomass. Contrary to
expectations, species richness was not an important driver of stability.
Instead, community temporal stability was mainly driven by water and
nitrogen availability that modulated the degree of species asynchrony,
and, to a lesser extent, by the stability of dominant plant species.
Synthesis. Our results highlight the importance of limiting resources for
regulating community biomass stability, and suggest that the projected
increase in growing season precipitation may potentially offset negative
effects of increased atmospheric nitrogen deposition on species diversity
and community stability in semi-arid grasslands.