Hydraulic redistribution (HR) of water from wet- to dry-soil zones is suggested as an important process in the resilience of forest ecosystems to drought stress in semiarid and tropical climates. Scenarios of future climate change predict an increase of severe drought conditions in temperate...

Identifying the environmental factors controlling litter decomposition is key to understanding the magnitude and rates of nutrient cycling in tropical forests, and how they may be influenced by climate variability and environmental change. We carried out a leaf litter translocation experiment in...

Determining soil carbon (C) responses to rising temperature is critical for projections of the feedbacks between terrestrial ecosystems, C cycle, and climate change. However, the direction and magnitude of this feedback remain highly uncertain due largely to our limited understanding of the spatial ...

It is critical to identify the community assembly patterns (i.e., deterministic or stochastic processes) of soil microbes and the potential driving factors to better predict the belowground biodiversity and functioning in forest ecosystems. Here, a combined approach of neutral model and...

Soil acidity plays a central role in the diversity and function of terrestrial ecosystems. Recent studies have revealed that acid deposition has acidified topsoil over time. However, uncertainties relating to how the acidity of the entire soil profile, including deep soil, responds to multiple...

Due to the intensification of human activities and global climate change, large areas of forest have been degraded and converted to other land uses. Soil translocation, which transfers the topsoil of donor forest to the receiving site to allow for the germination and reestablishment of soil seed...

Climate driven plant traits exert influence on ecosystem functioning through soil conditioning

Human activities, such as combustion of fossil fuel, production and application of nitrogenous fertilizer, and intensive livestock production, have been accelerating the production and emission of reactive nitrogen (e.g., NH₄⁺, NO₃^-), leading to elevated nitrogen (N) deposition at regional and...

Aims: Phosphorus (P) is a limited nutrient in highly weathered subtropical or tropical forest soils and it is unclear how both the cycling and availability of P will respond to future global warming and nitrogen (N) deposition. This study aims to evaluate the influence of soil warming and N...