IF: 3.9
CiteScore: 5.7
Editors-in-Chief
Yuanhe Yang
Bernhard Schmid
CN 10-1172/Q
ISSN 1752-9921(print)
ISSN 1752-993X(online)
  • Volume 18,Issue 6
    01 December 2025
      Research Article
      Jianyong Wang, Yingxia Liu, Ayub M.O. Oduor, Mark van Kleunen, Yanjie Liu
      2025, 18 (6): rtaf112.
      Abstract ( 50 )   PDF(pc) (1149KB) ( 14 )   Save
      Grasslands are highly diverse ecosystems providing important ecosystem services, but they currently face a variety of anthropogenic stressors simultaneously. Quantifying grassland responses to global change factors (GCFs) is crucial for developing effective strategies to mitigate the negative impacts of global change on grassland communities and to promote their resilience in the face of future environmental challenges. We conducted a field experiment in the Songnen grassland, northeastern China, to test the combined effects of 0, 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 GCFs, including fungicide, herbicide, insecticide, antibiotic stress, heavy metal pollution, light pollution, microplastic pollution, nitrogen deposition, tillage disturbance, and increased precipitation. We found that within one year, the increasing number of GCFs negatively impacts both the productivity and diversity of grassland communities. In comparison to exposure to a single GCF, exposure to 8 GCFs led to a reduction in productivity and species richness by 42.8% and 42.9%, respectively. Furthermore, these negative effects seem to be linked to the reduction of dominant species and the concurrent increase in neonative species (i.e., species that have expanded their geographic range into a new area without direct human assistance, but as an indirect consequence of human-induced environmental changes). The results of hierarchical diversity-interaction modeling suggested that the adverse impacts of an increasing number of GCFs on community productivity and diversity are attributable to both the specific identities of GCFs involved and their unique pairwise interactions. The results suggest that grasslands may quickly lose stability and degrade more rapidly in response to multiple co-occurring GCFs. Greater efforts should be made to conserve the functions and services of grassland ecosystems by reducing the impacts of human activities.
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    Distinct effects of drought and nitrogen enrichment on the compositional and productivity stability of temperate grasslands
    Jiatao Zhang, Lan Du, Yonghong Luo, Yann Hautier, Ru Tian, Yan Shen, Mohsin Mahmood, Zhuwen Xu
    doi: 10.1093/jpe/rtaf167
    Abstract ( 2 )    PDF    Save
    Drought events and nitrogen deposition are substantially modifying the stability of terrestrial ecosystems. Previous studies have mostly investigated these factors separately, with an emphasis on productivity stability, leaving their combined effects on multiple dimensions of ecosystem stability poorly understood. We conducted a four-year grassland manipulative experiment to examine how three drought scenarios—intense drought, chronic drought, and precipitation frequency reduction—interact with nitrogen addition to influence community compositional stability and productivity stability. The results showed that drought and nitrogen enrichment independently influenced grassland stability without significant interactions. Both intense and chronic drought reduced productivity stability, while reduced precipitation frequency decreased compositional stability. Nitrogen addition decreased both types of stability. Productivity stability was driven by the dominant species’ productivity stability or a combination of it and species asynchrony, depending on the drought scenario. Compositional stability consistently depended on the dominant species’ compositional stability. Compositional and productivity stability remained decoupled across treatments. This study provides the first empirical evidence of the divergent responses of grassland compositional and productivity stability to various drought scenarios under nitrogen enrichment. Our findings highlight the importance of prioritizing dominant species and promoting species coexistence with diverse environmental responses to maintain stable grassland composition and productivity under global change.
    Soil multifunctionality in the face of climate change and human impact in China’s drylands
    Siyuan Gao, Yifan Gao, Huimin Zhou, Chunyan Lu, Xinxin Wang, Ying Chen, Hao Wang, Chengcheng Dong, Huiying Liu
    doi: 10.1093/jpe/rtaf165
    Abstract ( 0 )    PDF    Save
    The United Nations has designated 2021–2030 as the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration” to combat ecosystem degradation. Climate change and human activities are the primary drivers of this degradation, which has significantly impacted soil multifunctionality (SMF) in China’s drylands. However, the effects of human activities, particularly those related to ecological restoration policies, remain poorly understood. Here, we evaluated the influence of climate change and human activities on five soil functions based on 18,189 observations from 841 studies in China’s drylands and used machine learning methods to forecast future changes. We found that warming and precipitation changes had overall minimal effects on SMF. In contrast, nitrogen deposition improved it by 13.4%, mainly by enhancing soil nutrient supply and productivity. Human activities, particularly ecological restoration, had a greater impact on SMF than climate change. For instance, policies like the Grain for Green Program enhanced the climate regulation function by 32.2%. Further, we found that local climate conditions primarily influenced SMF responses to climate change, while the duration of restoration efforts shaped responses to human activities. Our projections of SMF under the sustainable emission scenario (SSP1-2.6) suggested that well-planned ecological restoration was likely to sustain and enhance SMF over time, particularly in hyper-arid areas. These findings highlight that human activities exert a more significant influence on SMF than climate change in China’s drylands and may provide a scientific basis for sustainable management and ecological restoration of arid ecosystems.
    Depth-dependent mechanisms underpinning soil organic carbon accumulation following afforestation
    Qingquan Xie, Yongxian Liu, Zihong Zhu, Kongcao Xiao, Dejun Li
    doi: 10.1093/jpe/rtaf166
    Abstract ( 7 )    PDF    Save
    Afforestation is crucial for soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration, yet the depth-specific mechanisms, particularly the roles of lignin and microbial necromass carbon (MNC) in SOC accumulation, are not well elucidated. Understanding these processes is vital for optimizing carbon management strategies. To address this, we conducted a paired-site study in a subtropical karst region of southwest China, comparing 14 maize fields with adjacent ∼20-year-old plantation forests. Soil lignin, MNC, SOC, and related edaphic variables were quantified in topsoil (0–15 cm) and subsoil (30–45 cm) to determine the impacts of afforestation. Results showed that afforestation significantly increased SOC, lignin, and MNC in both soil layers. Topsoil lignin and MNC contents rose by 74.5% and 64.3% (p < 0.001), respectively. While subsoil SOC also increased, the relative importance of lignin and MNC to SOC accumulation was lower than in topsoil. Our analysis suggests that mineral protection, particularly by exchangeable calcium and magnesium, was the dominant SOC stabilization pathway, responsible for 45% of SOC variance in the subsoil. Our findings reveal distinct, depth-dependent pathways for SOC accumulation following afforestation: in topsoil, accumulation was primarily driven by biotic inputs, especially microbial necromass, while mineral protection, through mechanisms like cation bridging and aggregation, was crucial in subsoil. These insights advocate for depth-differentiated management, such as selecting tree species that enhance topsoil microbial activity and prioritizing sites with high mineral content for subsoil carbon stabilization, to maximize SOC sequestration following afforestation in the karst regions.
    Nitrogen addition regulates community biomass resistance and recovery to drought by altering species asynchrony rather than the diversity response
    Yimin Zhao, Zhen Zhang, Li Zhang, Miaojun Ma, Guorui Hu, Shurong Zhou
    doi: 10.1093/jpe/rtaf158
    Abstract ( 13 )    PDF    Save
    Extreme climatic events often co-occur with persistent environmental disturbances, such as nitrogen enrichment, which may influence the resistance and recovery of plant communities to extreme climatic conditions. However, most studies have focused on the resistance and recovery of community functions (e.g. biomass) to climatic events while neglecting the corresponding responses of diversity. Here, we performed a soil nitrogen addition experiment in an alpine meadow from 2011 to 2020, with 2015 characterized by extreme drought. We explored the effects of nitrogen addition on the resistance and recovery of plant community biomass and diversity in response to extreme drought using measures including community biomass, taxonomic diversity (TD), phylogenetic diversity (PD), and functional diversity (FD). We found that nitrogen addition decreased biomass resistance, mainly due to species asynchrony rather than the diversity resistance, even though PD and FD resistance also declined. Meanwhile, nitrogen addition enhanced the recovery of biomass to drought. This was mainly attributable to the direct, positive impact of nitrogen on biomass recovery, coupled with an indirect influence of species asynchrony, without any diversity (TD, PD, FD) recovery’s effects. Our results indicate that soil nitrogen enrichment mainly influences plant biomass responses to extreme drought, with a relatively small effect on plant diversity. Additionally, the mechanisms driving diversity and biomass responses may operate independently, as changes in diversity response did not scale up to changes in biomass. We anticipate that maintenance of plant community biomass during extreme drought would be more challenging in conditions of high nitrogen deposition.
    Evolutionary history and environmental filtering jointly structure ectomycorrhizal fungal communities across Qinghai-Tibetan Pinaceae forests
    Deyi Wang, Hans Jacquemyn, Guangru Wang, Yongping Kou, Junxiang Ding, Peipei Zhang, Huajun Yin
    doi: 10.1093/jpe/rtaf159
    Abstract ( 7 )    PDF    Save
    Plant-microbe interactions are fundamental to biodiversity maintenance and ecosystem functioning, and their assembly is shaped by a complex interplay of ecological and evolutionary processes. However, how these forces jointly influence ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungal communities, especially those dominant in subalpine forests, remains poorly understood. To address this, we investigated EcM fungal communities associated with 11 species of Pinaceae (Abies, Picea, and Pinus) across 195 monodominant stands in the subalpine forests of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. We found that all pine species consistently associated with a broad phylogenetic range of EcM fungal lineages and that pine-EcM association networks exhibited low connectance, indicating low partner specificity. Variation in fungal community structure was significantly influenced by host identity, environmental factors, and spatial distribution, but not by host phylogenetic relatedness. Notably, fungal taxa from three dominant lineages (Sebacina, Russula, and Inocybe) were clustered phylogenetically with globally distributed Pinaceae-associated taxa, pointing to evolutionarily conserved symbiotic associations across biogeographic regions. Together, these results indicate that EcM fungal communities in subalpine Pinaceae forests are assembled through a combination of evolutionary conservatism and environmental filtering. The persistent association with key EcM fungi across Pinaceae species underscores their essential role in supporting tree physiology and forest ecosystem stability in subalpine environments.
  • 2025, Vol. 18 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2024, Vol. 17 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2023, Vol. 16 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2022, Vol. 15 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2021, Vol. 14 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2020, Vol. 13 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2019, Vol. 12 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2018, Vol. 11 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2017, Vol. 10 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2016, Vol. 9 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2015, Vol. 8 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2014, Vol. 7 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2013, Vol. 6 No.6 No.5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2012, Vol. 5 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2011, Vol. 4 No.4 No.3 No.1-2
    2010, Vol. 3 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2009, Vol. 2 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
    2008, Vol. 1 No.4 No.3 No.2 No.1
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