Resource–Trait Coordination Under Multiple Global Change Factors Shapes Ecosystem Stability

Research published in Ecology Letters in 2016 highlighted the complexity of navigating ecological stability, while a 2023 meta-analysis in Science of the Total Environment found that grassland stability declines as the number of global change factors increases. A further meta-analysis in the Journal of Ecology (2022) confirmed that multiple global changes together drive both grassland productivity and stability.

A 2022 study in Nature Communications found that the number of simultaneously acting global change factors affects the composition, diversity, and productivity of grassland plant communities. A 2026 paper in the same journal reported that global change factors differ in their effects when acting alone compared with when they operate within a multi-factor background.

Warming and nitrogen addition compound effects

A study published in the Journal of Ecology in 2020 found additive negative effects of decade-long warming and nitrogen addition on grassland community stability. Research in Oikos (2022) showed that intra- and interspecific variability in specific leaf area can partially offset reductions in community stability caused by warming and nitrogen addition. A 2024 study in Global Change Biology reported opposing responses of aboveground and belowground net primary productivity stability to water and nitrogen enrichment in a temperate grassland.

Species asynchrony has been identified as a key mechanism. A 2015 Journal of Ecology study found that environmental changes drive temporal stability in semi-arid natural grasslands by altering species asynchrony. A 2016 Global Change Biology study showed that nitrogen enrichment weakens ecosystem stability through decreased species asynchrony and population stability. A 2008 paper in American Naturalist examined neutral and non-neutral drivers of species synchrony in fluctuating environments.

Elevated CO₂, diversity, and carbon cycling

Research in Nature (2024) found that high CO₂ first dampens and then amplifies nitrogen-induced diversity loss over a 24-year period. A 2025 Ecology Letters study found that elevated CO₂ and nitrogen gradually weaken the influence of diversity on ecosystem stability. A 2019 Science paper demonstrated that multiple global change factors play a role in driving soil functions and microbial biodiversity.

A 2019 meta-analysis in Nature Ecology and Evolution, drawing on 1,119 manipulative experiments, examined terrestrial carbon-cycling responses to global change. A 2020 Nature Geoscience paper reported synergistic effects of four climate change drivers on terrestrial carbon cycling. A 2021 Nature study identified a trade-off between plant and soil carbon storage under elevated CO₂, while a 2022 Nature Ecology and Evolution paper found contrasting responses of woody and grassland ecosystems to increased CO₂ as water supply varies.

Work from long-running field experiments — including a 20-year grassland study reported in Science (2018) and the B4WarmED experiment detailed in Global Change Biology (2015) — provided evidence on how combined factors such as elevated CO₂, warming, reduced rainfall, and nitrogen shape leaf gas exchange and broader ecosystem responses. A 2022 Science paper documented declining nitrogen availability in terrestrial ecosystems, and a 2024 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study found that long-term productivity stability increases with tree diversity in Canadian forests.

Additional findings include a 2015 Science study showing that anthropogenic environmental changes affect ecosystem stability via biodiversity, a 2014 Nature paper reporting that eutrophication weakens the stabilising effects of diversity in natural grasslands, and a 2022 Nature paper documenting emerging signals of declining forest resilience under climate change. A 2024 Communications Earth and Environment study found that aboveground productivity stability in a semiarid Chinese steppe is influenced by plant community structure.