Decoupled responses of plants and soil biota to global change across the world’s land ecosystems

Abstract

Understanding the concurrent responses of aboveground and belowground biota compartments to global changes is crucial for the maintenance of ecosystem functions and biodiversity conservation. We conduct a comprehensive analysis synthesizing data from 13,209 single observations and 3223 pairwise observations from 1166 publications across the world terrestrial ecosystems to examine the responses of plants and soil organisms and their synchronization. We find that global change factors (GCFs) generally promote plant biomass but decreased plant species diversity. In comparison, the responses of belowground soil biota to GCFs are more variable and harder to predict. The analysis of the paired aboveground and belowground observations demonstrate that responses of plants and soil organisms to GCFs are decoupled among diverse groups of soil organisms for different biomes. Our study highlights the importance of integrative research on the aboveground-belowground system for improving predictions regarding the consequences of global environmental change.