Extensive drought-associated plant mortality as an agent of type-conversion in chaparral shrublands

What is it about?

Recent droughts have transformed many of the ecosystems in California including the state's most extensive biotic community, the chaparral shrublands. These droughts have triggered extensive mortality of dominant shrubs and have apparently set chaparral in many areas on a path to conversion from a closed canopy shrubland to an open canopy savannah-type that includes a greater abundance of invasive annual grasses and forbs, and diminished biodiversity.

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