This study investigates how shrub-induced changes in litter dynamics affect soil organic carbon (SOC) in the Tibetan Plateau. We found that slower shrub shoot decomposition increases labile particulate organic carbon but decreases stable mineral-associated organic carbon. Consequently, this compositional shift reduces long-term soil carbon stability without altering total SOC content.

We investigated plant and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) community responses to altered precipitation in a temperate grassland of Inner Mongolia. Plant and AMF diversity responded divergently, whereas their spatial compositional variability converged under reduced precipitation, with AMF variability driven primarily by abiotic soil filtering.

Based on a semi-arid sandy-land restoration chronosequence, this study integrated plant, soil, and microbial stoichiometry and found that relative phosphorus limitation of soil microorganisms intensified during vegetation restoration. Plant communities regulated leaf stoichiometry through divergent assembly pathways involving species turnover and intraspecific trait variation, thereby buffering phosphorus constraints in the soil-microbial system.

A two-year systematic transplant experiment in a subtropical forest showed that conspecific negative effects intensified as seedlings grow, while heterospecific neighbors were neutral or positive. Abiotic effects varied temporally and were species-specific. Our results highlight that both biotic and abiotic drivers jointly shape seedling establishment over time in this heterogeneous forest.

This study reveals that lithology and rock-soil interfaces synergistically drive GRSP accrual in karst forests via microbial and mineral C pumps. Rock-soil interface soils show significantly higher GRSP than bulk soils, with limestone outperforming dolostone. We propose the “Roccosphere” concept to define this microhabitat, offering new insights for soil carbon sequestration in degraded karst ecosystems.

Based on a multi-year precipitation manipulation experiment in a semi-arid typical steppe, we investigated how soil virus-microbe interactions influence microbial necromass carbon accumulation. Altered precipitation affected microbial necromass carbon by modifying soil moisture, viral and microbial communities, and their interactions, providing new insights into soil carbon sequestration in water-limited grasslands.

This study developed annual 30 m rubber plantation stand age maps for China from 1987 to 2022 by integrating Landsat time series, bidirectional CCDC, handheld laser scanning, and a height-age model. The results reveal a shift from juvenile-dominated plantations to a multi-cohort structure, providing spatial evidence for renewal planning, latex production assessment, and carbon accounting.

In seasonal alpine ecosystems, drought impacts depend strongly on timing. Using a mesocosm experiment with six species typical of widespread Alpine grasslands, the study compared four two-month treatments: continuous irrigation (C), early-season drought (ED), mid-season drought (MD), and full-season drought (FD), measuring leaf growth and senescence onset/intensity. ED and FD reduced leaf growth for most species and at community level (−30% and −51% vs. C); only Carex curvula responded to MD (−24%). Senescence began ∼33 days earlier under ED and FD for most species. After two months, senescence increased under ED, MD and FD (+88%, +316%, +627%), with forbs more affected by MD than graminoids (+85% vs. +32%). Thus, drought most strongly reduced growth when early, but had the greatest senescence effects about one month after snowmelt, highlighting species-specific responses and drought timing as key controls on climate-change impacts in high-elevation grasslands.

Plant invasions are driven by complex abiotic and biotic filters, including plant-plant interactions, multi-trophic relationships, and plant-environment dynamics. While current studies often isolate single mechanisms, future research must adopt a community ecology perspective to integrate these processes and uncover the holistic drivers of plant invasion and dominance.

The coordination between primary and secondary growth phenology and its impact on radial growth under climate change remain poorly understood. Based on multi-year growth observations of Pinus taiwanensis across an elevational gradient on Lushan Mountain, we found that spring warming and summer-autumn drought induced seasonally asymmetric phenological responses of shoots and stems, resulting in greater phenological synchrony between needle and stem growth. This increased phenological synchrony may intensify competition for carbon resources among organs, thereby weakening the dependence of radial stem growth on primary growth.

Using a controlled wind-tunnel experiment with diaspores from 30 plant species, we tested how vegetation cover, life-form composition, vertical and horizontal arrangement, and diaspore traits influence secondary wind dispersal. Increasing vegetation cover consistently reduced dispersal, while trait effects depended on vegetation structure, highlighting vegetation as a key physical filter of diaspore movement.

Using a 58-year wood-anatomical chronology from three treeline sites in Northeast China, this study quantified how climate and radial growth regulate the vessel-fiber trade-off in Betula ermanii. A new hydraulic-mechanical index showed that warm-dry stress favors vessel-based hydraulic efficiency, whereas favorable growth increases fiber-wall investment and mechanical support over time.

This review assesses vascular-plant-based forest bioindication using a structured conceptual review and an ABC matrix linking biological level, forest type, and trait category. It metadata-classified 1,278 publications retrieved for Jan 2000–May 2025. Findings show dominance of species- and community-level studies and of temperate, especially deciduous, forests; functional/morphometric traits were most common, whereas biochemical, cellular- and organ-level indicators were weakly integrated. The field expanded rather than replaced species-based approaches. Exploratory ordination/clustering suggested two descriptive orientations—tropical/subtropical ecosystem–community work using morpho-functional traits, and temperate physiological–biochemical work—but these remain tentative given metadata-based, exploratory methods. The ABC framework can improve comparability and diagnostic coherence across levels, forest types, and traits.

This study integrates 683 field sites and 26,650 remote-sensing points across Inner Mongolia to define spatially explicit ecological threshold zones. Two critical aridity ranges (0.50–0.57 and 0.80–0.84) mark biodiversity-rich but fragile and functionally degraded ecosystems, respectively, highlighting major conservation gaps and increasing future risks under climate change.

In rewilded Moso bamboo forests where both harvesting and fertilization have ceased, we show that reduced nutrient export promotes soil nutrient accumulation and compensates the absence of fertilizer inputs. Moreover, mature bamboo acts as a nutrient reservoir, redistributing nutrients through clonal networks to support the growth of young bamboo and sustain forest productivity.

This study is based on subalpine forest communities of Yulong Mountain and compares elevational differences in diversity, community composition, and host-plant interaction networks between mycorrhizal and plant-pathogenic fungi. The results reveal that these two fungal groups are governed by distinct ecological processes and exhibit divergent diversity patterns as well as plant-fungal interaction-network attributes. This work provides new insights into plant-microbe interactions in mountain forests under global change.

This study reveals how intraspecific trait variation (ITV) and microclimate are associated with microbial community assembly and fungal-bacterial interactions during early-stage downed log decomposition. By comparing two forest ecosystems in Mount WuYi, we identified system-specific association patterns between ITV, microclimate, microbial interaction networks, and metabolic pathways, providing exploratory evidence for understanding community assembly patterns during log decomposition.

Using GEDI and Sentinel data, we mapped 30-m forest aboveground biomass in Beijing. Anthropogenic disturbance was the primary driver of biomass variation (66%), followed by canopy structure diversity (20%) and environmental factors (14%). Disturbance directly reduced biomass and indirectly suppressed it by decreasing leaf area index. Our findings highlight the key mediating role of canopy structure in linking urban disturbance to forest biomass.

This study investigated six common plant species in a temperate grassland in northern China to quantify the plasticity bias between nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) and water-use efficiency (WUE) under nitrogen addition and drought, and to identify the key traits driving this bias. Most species exhibited greater WUE than NUE plasticity under nitrogen addition and drought, with an increased bias intensity. Leaf nitrogen content emerged as a dominant trait driving this plasticity bias. These findings provide new insights into plant resource-use strategies under global changes.

This study, based on 94 subtropical natural forest plots, examined the effects of taxonomic, functional, and structural diversity, as well as environmental factors, on aboveground biomass. The results showed that species, functional, and structural diversity all promoted forest biomass, with structural diversity showing greater explanatory power. The elevational patterns of tree diversity and biomass did not support the species-energy hypothesis. Adequate water availability and high soil fertility are conducive to maintaining forest biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

Leaf, root and whole-plant traits of Machilus pauhoi were consistently resource-acquisitive in mixed forest with Magnoliaceae glanca compared to pure forest and mixed forest with Cerasus campanulate. Root trait variation was more sensitive to soil environment compared to leaf traits.

This study reveals that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) exert differential effects on the growth and phenology of core versus edge populations of Galinsoga quadriradiata, highlighting that AMF play dual roles in invasion expansion: AMF promote invasion in core populations while potentially limit spread at invasion front by mediating plant growth, reproduction, and temporal niche differentiation.

This study investigates how root exudate flux and stoichiometry regulate rhizosphere microbes and soil aggregate stability in four dominant riparian species of the Three Gorges Reservoir drawdown zone. We found that exudates drive stage-dependent aggregation mainly through direct effects, while microbial pathways, especially fungi, provide delayed growth-stage-specific contributions.

Using a greenhouse experiment combining five native-litter richness levels with sterilized and unsterilized soils, we revealed that litter diversity and soil microbes interactively regulate post-germination growth and biomass allocation of the invader Phytolacca americana. Soil microbes substantially weakened litter-richness effects, highlighting belowground microbial processes as an important regulator of the allelopathic contribution to the diversity-invasibility relationship.

Using a 13-year nitrogen deposition experiment in the Gurbantunggut Desert, this study explored the regulation of phosphorus cycling by phoD-harboring bacterial communities in biocrusts. Nitrogen deposition altered P availability through soil acidification, ALP activity, and microbial shifts, with low N enhancing organic P mineralization and high N suppressing this process.

This study demonstrates that root functional traits regulate soil carbon accumulation by reshaping microbial life-history strategies in an alpine meadow. Communities with thinner roots and higher specific root length showed greater capacity of net SOC accumulation, while enhanced K-strategist fungi likely promoted fungal necromass formation and contributed to long-term soil carbon persistence.