Plant growth and aboveground production respond differently to late-season deluges in a semi-arid grassland

Semi-arid ecosystems are strongly water-limited and typically quite responsive to changes in precipitation amount and event size. In the C4-dominated shortgrass steppe of the Central US, previous experiments suggest that large rain events more effectively stimulate plant growth and aboveground net primary production (ANPP) than an equal amount of precipitation from smaller events. Responses to naturally occurring large events have generally been...