The role of multiple global change factors in driving soil functions and microbial biodiversity

• DOI: 10.1126/science.aay2832
• Publication Date: 2019-11-15T00:06:31Z
• Authors: Matthias C. Rillig; Masahiro Ryo; Anika Lehmann; Carlos A. Aguilar...; Sabine Buchert; Anja Wulf; Aiko Iwasaki; Julien Roy; Gaowen Yang
• Keywords: Global Change

Soils underpin terrestrial ecosystem functions, but they face numerous anthropogenic pressures. Despite their crucial ecological role, we know little about how soils react to more than two environmental factors at a time. Here, show experimentally that increasing the number of simultaneous global change (up 10) caused directional changes in soil properties, processes, and microbial communities, though there was greater uncertainty predicting magnitude change. Our study provides blueprint for addressing multifactor with an efficient, broadly applicable experimental design studying impacts