An aerial drone photo taken on April 28, 2024 shows a view of the Kanbula National Geopark in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, northwest China's Qinghai Province. (Photo by Yangel Dongrub/Xinhua)LANZHOU, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have recently unveiled the impact of changes in plant phenology on the stability of the alpine meadow ecosystem on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, according to Lanzhou University.The study, which aims to explore how phenological shifts affect ecosystem stability in the region, found that the response of alpine plant phenology to nitrogen addition reduces community biomass stability in alpine meadows on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, according to Ma Miaojun, a professor at the College of Ecology at Lanzhou University who led the study.Phenology is a sensitive indicator of plant responses to environmental changes, and its shifts could impact community structure and function.Some studies have shown that nitrogen enrichment and changes in rainfall patterns are having an increasingly significant impact on the alpine grassland ecosystem of the plateau, posing a growing threat to the region's ecological security, according to Ma.The research team set up a long-term field control experiment in a typical alpine meadow located at an altitude of 3,540 meters above sea level in the eastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Over four consecutive years from 2020, they monitored leaf growth and flowering phenology across 55 alpine meadow plant species.They then analyzed the response of plant phenology to nitrogen enrichment and precipitation in alpine meadows, examining its effects on the stability of the plant community.The findings suggest that nitrogen enrichment reduces phenological compensation, thereby threatening grassland stability, and this highlights the importance of phenological niches in understanding how grassland stability is maintained amid ongoing climate change, according to Ma.This study provides new experimental evidence that nitrogen enrichment has a negative effect on the temporal stability of biomass in plant communities in alpine meadows of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, but not with precipitation changes.It has disclosed the mechanism of nitrogen enrichment affecting the stability of the alpine meadow ecosystem from the perspective of alpine plant phenology.This new study highlights that plant phenology is crucial to understanding changes in plant community stability under future climate scenarios.The findings have been published in the journal New Phytologist.