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Updated: Dec 13, 2025

Simulating Temperature in a Soil Incubation Experiment
Published on: October 28, 2022
Climate change and intensive land use reduce soil animal biomass via dissimilar pathways
Rui Yin1,2,3, Julia Siebert2,3, Nico Eisenhauer2,3
1Department of Community Ecology, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Halle, Germany.
Abstract:
Global change drivers, such as climate change and land use, may profoundly influence body size, density, and biomass of soil organisms. However, it is still unclear how these concurrent drivers interact in affecting ecological communities. Here, we present the results of an experimental field study assessing the interactive effects of climate change and land-use intensification on body size, density, and biomass of soil microarthropods. We found that the projected climate change and intensive land use decreased their total biomass. Strikingly, this reduction was realized via two dissimilar pathways: climate change reduced mean body size and intensive land use decreased density. These findings highlight that two of the most pervasive global change drivers operate via different pathways when decreasing soil animal biomass. These shifts in soil communities may threaten essential ecosystem functions like organic matter turnover and nutrient cycling in future ecosystems.
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