Fig. 5

Effect of the mean annual precipitation in the present year on the NIP. The mean annual precipitation (in mm of rainfall per day) was measured by two weather stations near the field site. The parameter estimates used to calculate the effect sizes were taken from the model-averaged parameter estimates in Additional file 1: Section 5. Increasing the precipitation of the present year by one standard deviation (e.g., 0.5 mm of precipitation) decreased the NIP by an average of 23.2% at each of the four elevation sites