Plant communities are being exposed to changing environmental conditions all around the globe, leading to alterations in plant diversity, community composition, and ecosystem functioning. For herbaceous understorey communities in temperate forests, responses to global change are postulated to be complex, due to the presence of a tree layer that modulates understorey responses to external pressures such as climate change and ch...

Aim Experimental nitrogen (N) addition (fertilization) studies are commonly used to quantify the impacts of increased N inputs on plant biodiversity. However, given that plant community responses can vary considerably among individual studies, there is a clear need to synthesize and generalize findings with meta‐analytical approaches. Our goal was to quantify changes in species richness and abundance in plant communities in re...

One of the major challenges in ecology is to predict how multiple global environmental changes will affect future ecosystem patterns (e.g. plant community composition) and processes (e.g. nutrient cycling). Here, we highlight arguments for the necessary inclusion of land‐use legacies in this endeavour. Alterations in resources and conditions engendered by previous land use, together with influences on plant community processes...