Aim <p>Enhancing ecological stability is crucial providing services and maintaining functions in ecosystems. The stabilizing mechanism has been a theoretical hotspot in ecosystem research underpinning vegetation construction and management practices to address future climate change. Considering the context dependence in ecology, investigating how the biomass production of various plant communities has stabilized under climate change is imperative.</p> Methods <p>We manipulated precipitation changes over three years to simulate three levels of precipitation amounts and two levels of precipitation intervals. We assessed the effects of changes in precipitation the temporal stability of above-ground biomass in mixed shrub-grass and pure grass communities, and identified their stabilizing mechanisms.</p> Results <p>Under extended precipitation intervals, the temporal stability of mixed shrub-grass communities decreased significantly with decreasing precipitation, whereas the temporal stability of pure grass communities was not significantly affected by the precipitation treatments. Under extended precipitation intervals, the population variance of mixed shrub-grass communities was significantly lower than that of pure grass communities. In mixed shrub-grass communities, reduced precipitation decreased species richness, which in turn lowered species asynchrony and ultimately reduced temporal stability. In both community types, species asynchrony and population variance positively influenced temporal stability. Among these, the primary stabilizing mechanism was the positive influence of species richness on species asynchrony, which subsequently increased temporal stability, a pathway driven mainly by compensatory effects.</p> Conclusions <p>Pure grass communities were more stable in the context of changes in precipitation. This enlightens us that constructing grass-dominated communities is more conducive to regional stability when carrying out ecological engineering in dryland ecosystems.</p>