Increasing effects of chronic nutrient enrichment on plant diversity loss and ecosystem productivity over time

Seabloom, Eric W.; Adler, Peter B.; Alberti, Juan; Biederman, Lori A.; Buckley, Yvonne M.; Cadotte, Marc W.; Collins, Scott L.; Dee, Laura E.; Fay, Philip A.; Firn, Jennifer; Hagenah, Nicole; Harpole, W. Stanley; Hautier, Yann; Héctor, Andy; Hobbie, Sarah E.; Isbell, Forest; Knops, Johannes M. H.; Komatsu, Kimberly J.; Laungani, Ramesh; MacDougall, Andrew S.; McCulley, Rebecca L.; Moore, Joslin L.; Morgan, John; Ohlert, Timothy; Prober, Suzanne M.; Risch, Anita C.; Schuetz, Martin; Stevens, Carly J.; Borer, Elizabeth T.

doi:10.1002/ecy.3218

Cited by 90 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Other studies have found that increased nutrient supply can increase soil C accumulation rates in uncultivated grassland (Crowther et al, 2019;Fornara & Tilman, 2012;Liu & Greaver, 2010;Lu et al, 2011;Seabloom et al, 2021;Yue et al, 2016), but our study builds from these globally distributed experiments and meta-analyses to demonstrate continuing, albeit slowing, long-term gains of soil C across nearly four decades. Interestingly, these results are in marked contrast to tests of nutrients and soil C storage in some annually cultivated crop fields (e.g., Khan et al, 2007), where persistent multidecadal disturbance of enriched soils has been associated with net losses of % soil C. et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

“…For example, humans are increasing supplies of biologically limiting resources, such as nitrogen (N), to Earth's ecosystems (Steffen et al, 2015; Vitousek et al, 1997), resulting in significant changes in communities and ecosystems (Elser et al, 2007; Hillebrand et al, 2007; Lawes & Gilbert, 1880; Midolo et al, 2019; Simkin et al, 2016; Song et al, 2019; Vitousek et al, 1997). In grasslands, many of which are on abandoned agricultural lands, increased nutrient supplies often lead to increased productivity and soil C accumulation (Crowther et al, 2019; Fay et al, 2015; Fornara & Tilman, 2012; Seabloom et al, 2021; Ziter & MacDougall, 2013). However, increased nutrient supply rates reduce diversity in grassland ecosystems, and this diversity loss may reduce the positive effects of nutrients on productivity and soil C in the long term (Hungate et al, 2017; Isbell et al, 2013; Yang et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nutrient addition experiments can address some of the limitations of the chronosequence approach for understanding soil C dynamics by controlling for the effects of shifting baseline conditions (Lu et al, 2011); however, these experiments are rarely conducted over the multi-decadal timescales needed to examine effects on the trajectory of C accumulation (Crowther et al, 2019;Fornara & Tilman, 2012). Furthermore, nutrient effects can change in complex, nonlinear ways over time (Avolio et al, 2014;Isbell et al, 2013;Seabloom et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2009Smith et al, , 2015, so it may not be possible to infer long-term nutrient effects from short-term experiments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Soil nutrients increase long‐term soil carbon gains threefold on retired farmland

Seabloom

Borer

Hobbie

et al. 2021

Global Change Biology

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Abandoned agricultural lands often accumulate soil carbon (C) following depletion of soil C by cultivation. The potential for this recovery to provide significant C storage benefits depends on the rate of soil C accumulation, which, in turn, may depend on nutrient supply rates. We tracked soil C for almost four decades following intensive agricultural soil disturbance along an experimentally imposed gradient in nitrogen (N) added annually in combination with other macro‐ and micro‐nutrients. Soil %C accumulated over the course of the study in unfertilized control plots leading to a gain of 6.1 Mg C ha−1 in the top 20 cm of soil. Nutrient addition increased soil %C accumulation leading to a gain of 17.8 Mg C ha−1 in fertilized plots, nearly a threefold increase over the control plots. These results demonstrate that substantial increases in soil C in successional grasslands following agricultural abandonment occur over decadal timescales, and that C gain is increased by high supply rates of soil nutrients. In addition, soil %C continued to increase for decades under elevated nutrient supply, suggesting that short‐term nutrient addition experiments underestimate the effects of soil nutrients on soil C accumulation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Soil nutrients increase long‐term soil carbon gains threefold on retired farmland

Seabloom

Borer

Hobbie

et al. 2021

Global Change Biology

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“…Finally, we hypothesised that multiple resource additions will result in greater changes than single resource treatments. We addressed these hypotheses by leveraging data from a range of sites and assessed whether ecosystem attributes contribute to responsiveness of community change processes, because the response of a community to GCD treatments can depend on local abiotic conditions (Seabloom et al, 2021; Walker et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants of community compositional change are equally affected by global change

et al. 2021

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Global change is impacting plant community composition, but the mechanisms underlying these changes are unclear. Using a dataset of 58 global change experiments, we tested the five fundamental mechanisms of community change: changes in evenness and richness, reordering, species gains and losses. We found 71% of communities were impacted by global change treatments, and 88% of communities that were exposed to two or more global change drivers were impacted. Further, all mechanisms of change were equally likely to be affected by global change treatments—species losses and changes in richness were just as common as species gains and reordering. We also found no evidence of a progression of community changes, for example, reordering and changes in evenness did not precede species gains and losses. We demonstrate that all processes underlying plant community composition changes are equally affected by treatments and often occur simultaneously, necessitating a wholistic approach to quantifying community changes.

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“…While the fast components of ecological acclimation, such as physiological adjustment, can be studied using experimental and observational approaches, we know much less about the rate of slow components. Experiments typically lack the spatial or temporal extent to observe species turnover or evolutionary adaptation, and may only capture transient behavior [10][11][12] . Paleoecological observations provide much of what we know about long-term ecological responses to environmental change 13 , but the data have critical gaps [15][16][17] , and current rates and magnitudes of warming exceed those observed in the past 18,19 .…”

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confidence: 99%

The rate of ecosystem acclimation is the dominant uncertainty in long-term projections of an ecosystem service

Felton

Shriver

Stemkovski

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The potential for ecosystems to continue providing society with essential services may depend on their ability to acclimate to climate change through multiple processes operating from cells to landscapes. While models to predict climate change impacts on ecosystem services often consider uncertainty among greenhouse gas emission scenarios or global circulation models (GCMs), they rarely consider the rate of ecological acclimation, which depends on decadal-scale processes such as species turnover. Here we show that uncertainty due to the unknown rate of ecological acclimation is larger than other sources of uncertainty in late-century projections of forage production in US rangelands. Combining statistical models fit to historical climate data and remotely-sensed estimates of herbaceous productivity with an ensemble of GCMs, we projected changes in forage production using two approaches. The time-series approach, which assumes minimal acclimation, projects widespread decreases in forage production. The spatial gradient approach, which assumes ecological acclimation keeps pace with climate, predicts widespread increases in forage production. This first attempt to quantify the magnitude of a critical uncertainty emphasizes that better understanding of ecological acclimation is essential to improve long-term forecasts of ecosystem services, and shows that management to facilitate ecological acclimation may be necessary to maintain ecosystem services at historical baselines.

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Increasing effects of chronic nutrient enrichment on plant diversity loss and ecosystem productivity over time

Abstract: Increasing effects of chronic nutrient enrichment on plant diversity loss and Increasing effects of chronic nutrient enrichment on plant diversity loss and ecosystem productivity over time ecosystem productivity over time

Cited by 90 publications

References 66 publications

Soil nutrients increase long‐term soil carbon gains threefold on retired farmland

Soil nutrients increase long‐term soil carbon gains threefold on retired farmland

Determinants of community compositional change are equally affected by global change

The rate of ecosystem acclimation is the dominant uncertainty in long-term projections of an ecosystem service

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