| Literature DB >> 32948775 |
Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo1,2, Peter B Reich3,4, Richard D Bardgett5, David J Eldridge6, Hans Lambers7, David A Wardle8, Sasha C Reed9, César Plaza10, G Kenny Png5,8, Sigrid Neuhauser11, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe12, Stephen C Hart12, Hang-Wei Hu13,14, Ji-Zheng He13,14, Felipe Bastida15, Sebastián Abades16, Fernando D Alfaro16,17, Nick A Cutler18, Antonio Gallardo19, Laura García-Velázquez19, Patrick E Hayes7,20,21, Zeng-Yei Hseu22, Cecilia A Pérez17, Fernanda Santos12, Christina Siebe23, Pankaj Trivedi24, Benjamin W Sullivan25, Luis Weber-Grullon26,27,28, Mark A Williams29, Noah Fierer30,31.
Abstract
The importance of soil age as an ecosystem driver across biomes remains largely unresolved. By combining a cross-biome global field survey, including data for 32 soil, plant, and microbial properties in 16 soil chronosequences, with a global meta-analysis, we show that soil age is a significant ecosystem driver, but only accounts for a relatively small proportion of the cross-biome variation in multiple ecosystem properties. Parent material, climate, vegetation and topography predict, collectively, 24 times more variation in ecosystem properties than soil age alone. Soil age is an important local-scale ecosystem driver; however, environmental context, rather than soil age, determines the rates and trajectories of ecosystem development in structure and function across biomes. Our work provides insights into the natural history of terrestrial ecosystems. We propose that, regardless of soil age, changes in the environmental context, such as those associated with global climatic and land-use changes, will have important long-term impacts on the structure and function of terrestrial ecosystems across biomes.Entities:
Mesh：
Substances：
Year: 2020 PMID： 32948775 PMCID： PMC7501311 DOI： 10.1038/s41467-020-18451-3
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Nat Commun ISSN： 2041-1723 Impact factor: 14.919