Abstract: Under the dual effects of natural and human factors, the frequency of climate change such as extreme events of drought and precipitation increases, grassland vegetation coverage, grassland productivity and soil fertility decrease, and grassland carrying capacity decreases. Understanding the response of grassland ecosystems to climate change is of great significance for the sustainable utilization of grassland resources and the formulation of corresponding ecological protection and restoration measurements. We systematically reviewed the response of grassland ecosystems to the variations of temperature and precipitation from two aspects, grassland vegetation and soil environment, including grassland community structure, plant phenology, grassland productivity, soil temperature and humidity, soil respiration, soil microorganisms and soil enzymes. We focused on the discussions of research scale and experimental methods. On this basis, we put forward some scientific issues that need to be solved urgently in the study of the impact of climate change on grassland ecosystems, such as the cumulative effect and lag effect of plants, the interaction of biological communities, how to improve the accuracy of the model, and the responses of different plant functional groups to extreme climate events, in order to provide reference for future research.

Key words: climate change, plant community structure, plant phenology, grassland productivity, soil environment, grassland ecosystem, response mechanism