Abstract
Grassland canopy height is one of the most important traits for determining plant diversity and community structure, directly affecting the resource use efficiency of livestock in grassland ecosystems. However, broad-scale changes in grassland canopy height are seldom reported due to the complex effects of species aggregation on both interspecific and intraspecific structures. Here, we decouple grassland aboveground biomass into vertical and horizontal allocations, thereby offering a pathway to mirror changes in grassland canopy height. Grassland aboveground biomass is estimated using a machine learning algorithm by fusing climatic factors, satellite-driving metrics, and 8-year consecutive ground-truth surveys; the horizontal allocation of grassland aboveground biomass is derived from optimized linear spectral mixture analysis. We find that changes in horizontal biomass allocation primarily accounted for increases in Chinese grassland aboveground biomass from 2001 to 2022, resulting in a significant decline in grassland canopy height. The decline in grassland canopy height is shaped by reduced radiation and, more importantly, by the combined effects of warming and grazing, while also being related to variations in plant diversity. The dwarfing grassland community with declining canopy height may increase the impact of livestock disturbances, thus diminishing the resistance of grassland ecosystems to climate fluctuations.
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Data availability
The MOD09A1 data can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD09A1.061, and the MOD15A2H data from https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD15A2H.061. GEDI Level 2 A and Level 2B products are available at https://doi.org/10.5067/GEDI/GEDI02_A.002 and https://doi.org/10.5067/GEDI/GEDI02_B.002, respectively. The ERA5-Land dataset can be downloaded at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/. The CO2 data can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.24381/a90c7e33. The field measurements of aboveground biomass, fractional vegetation cover, canopy height, and species richness are collected from the National Inventory of Grassland Resources by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration of China. The grazing intensity data are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26195684. The data for continuous interannual measurements of aboveground biomass and fractional vegetation cover are primarily obtained from the China Ecosystem Research Network (www.nesdc.org.cn). The gridded dataset of grassland canopy height across China (2001–2022) generated in this study is available in the Zenodo repository [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18454934]49.
Code availability
The codes in this study are available in the Zenodo repository [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18453938]50.
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Acknowledgments
This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42471426). F.L. was supported by the Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (2025TC044) and the Science and Technology Program of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (2025YFDZ0055).
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H.L. conducted model simulations, analysed the results, and drafted the text. X.H. conducted driver analysis and drafted the text. F.L. designed the study, analysed the results, and edited the text. Y.Z. contributed to the improvement of the study design and the drafting of the text. K.L. and J.W. (Jie Wang) revised the manuscript. J.W. (Jiating Wang) contributed to the collection of ground-truth data.
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Li, H., Hu, X., Li, F. et al. Declining grassland canopy height in China under asymmetric biomass allocation. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70275-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70275-9
