Climate-nutrition-performance cascade

Critical climate periods for precipitation for ANPP, flowering of 3 grass species, bison weight gain, and the calving rate of adult females the following year.  

Some ranchers around here know that "a dry June is money in the bank". Supposedly when precipitation in June is low, cattle gain more weight. More cow means more money. I haven't heard it too much around here and I had never seen data to support it (until the work on bison weight gain at Konza), but it exemplifies the climate-nutrition-performance cascade and is a cautionary lesson in understanding climate change.

The performance of grazers--their weight gain and calving rate--is dependent on both the quantity and quality of the grass they eat. The interannual determinants of quantity seem fairly straightforward (for some sites). Quality is less so. Quality encompasses a lot of things, but primarily is protein. And protein is nitrogen.

The cascade links climate to performance through protein. The proximal and distal drivers of variation in protein are complicated enough that they are still being worked out. But as we work through this, it will be important to ask whether there protein at certain times is more important than others. And if so, maybe interannual variation in climate at certain times is more important than others. Rain in June might be more important than May, for example.

We've used the critical climate period approach to begin to tease some of this out at Konza. The figure above shows a broad CCP for ANPP--rain that falls in June or September still is important for determining growing season biomass. The three C4 grass species have different, but overlapping, CCP's. Each is about 80 d. In contrast, bison weight gain and calving rate seems to respond to variation in precipitation for just relatively short periods. One in late June, early July. The other mid- to late August. Calving rate depends on just mid- to late August precipitation.

Between climate and bison performance is protein. And the controls on protein we're still figuring out.

Until we do, we'll have a hard time understanding the dynamics of grazers, no less their fate in a world where climate has changed.