Climate change is reshaping ecosystem components and functions across soil profiles. In this study, we examined the effects of altered precipitation and nighttime warming on soil microbial communities in both topsoils (0–20 cm in depth) and subsoils (20–50 cm in depth) in a long‐term field experiment in Inner Mongolia, China. Unexpectedly, moisture, belowground net primary production, and NO 3 − content in subsoils were all af...

Responses of the terrestrial biosphere to rapidly changing environmental conditions are a major source of uncertainty in climate projections. In an effort to reduce this uncertainty, a wide range of global change experiments have been conducted that mimic future conditions in terrestrial ecosystems, manipulating CO 2 , temperature, and nutrient and water availability. Syntheses of results across experiments provide a more gene...

Drought events are projected to be more extreme and frequent in the future and have profound influences on the structure and functions of terrestrial ecosystems. Thus, better understanding the mechanisms of recovery is critical for predicting the future dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems. We performed a 7‐year field precipitation experiment to examine recovery of a grassland ecosystem from different magnitudes of sustained dro...

Anthropogenic nutrient enrichment is known to alter the composition and functioning of plant communities. However, how nutrient enrichment influences multiple dimensions of community‐ and ecosystem‐level stability remains poorly understood. Using data from a nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) addition experiment in a temperate semi‐arid grassland that experienced a natural drought, we show that N enrichment, not P enrichment, dec...

Ecological succession after disturbance plays a vital role in influencing ecosystem structure and functioning. However, how global change factors regulate ecosystem carbon (C) cycling in successional plant communities remains largely elusive. As part of an 8‐year (2012–2019) manipulative experiment, this study was designed to examine the responses of soil respiration and its heterotrophic component to simulated increases in pr...

Changing precipitation regimes could have profound influences on carbon (C) cycle in the biosphere. However, how soil C release from terrestrial ecosystems responds to changing seasonal distribution of precipitation remains unclear. A field experiment was conducted for 4 years (2013–2016) to examine the effects of altered precipitation distributions in the growing season on soil respiration in a temperate steppe in the Mongoli...