4.3 Individual species
Soil available nutrient enrichment can benefit the competitive ability
of perennial grasses over other plant species (DeMalach & Kadmon,
2017). However, our results indicate that, in the normal year (2019), N
and/or P input effectively enhanced the aboveground biomass of C.
aristatum than other dominant species. C. aristatum is generally
viewed as a non-mycorrhizal plant in grassland ecosystems (H. Tian et
al., 2009). Besieds, a meta-analysis also found that annual plant
species were more able to rapidly absorb water and nutrients compared
with other plant species (Lin, McCormack, & Guo, 2015). C.
aristatum has a shallow root system and can efficiently utilise
resource that are distributed in the upper layers of soils, especially
in arid grassland ecosystems (Yan et al., 2015). These characteristics
may be attributed to the pronounced impacts of both N and P inputs on
the aboveground biomass of C. aristatum in 2019.