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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 10, 2025

Experimental Protocol for Manipulating Plant-induced Soil Heterogeneity

Experimental Protocol for Manipulating Plant-induced Soil Heterogeneity

Published on: March 13, 2014

Resource-enhancing global changes drive a whole-ecosystem shift to faster cycling but decrease diversity.

Anu Eskelinen^1,2,3, Kelly Gravuer⁴, W Stanley Harpole^1,2,5

¹Department of Physiological Diversity, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany.

|September 2, 2020

Summary

Global changes like nutrient and rainfall additions accelerate ecosystem cycling, reducing plant diversity and increasing exotic species dominance. This study introduces a new metric, slow-fast multifunctionality, to track these ecosystem shifts.

Keywords:

climate change ecological multifunctionality exotics fast transition multiple global changes native diversity nutrient enrichment slow transition whole-ecosystem shift

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Environmental Science
Global Change Biology

Background:

Global changes, such as resource enhancements, can shift ecosystems from slow to fast cycling.
Understanding these transitions and their links to biodiversity and invasive species is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop a novel analytical approach to measure integrated ecosystem responses to resource-enhancing global changes.
To investigate how ecosystem slow-to-fast transitions relate to plant community diversity and exotic invasions.

Main Methods:

Experimental rainfall and nutrient enhancements were applied over five years in a natural grassland.
Sixteen ecosystem functions, pools, and stoichiometry variables indicating slow vs. fast cycling were measured.
A "slow-fast multifunctionality" index was created and related to plant diversity and exotic plant dominance.

Main Results:

Nutrient and rainfall additions interacted to influence slow-fast multifunctionality, with nutrient addition alone accelerating cycling.
The combined effect of nutrient and rainfall addition weakened the acceleration of cycling, particularly due to soil nutrient dynamics.
Faster cycling was linked to reduced plant species richness and increased exotic species dominance.

Conclusions:

Resource-enhancing global changes can trigger broad community and ecosystem shifts when resource limitation is reduced.
Ecosystem responses to nutrient and water addition can diverge between above- and belowground components.
The developed "slow-fast multifunctionality" metric effectively correlates with changes in biodiversity and invasion.