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JenaTron - An Experimental Approach to Study the Effects of Plant History and Soil History on Grassland Ecosystem Functioning

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Aridity mediates the scale-dependent relationship between plant diversity and soil multifunctionality.

Kai Wang¹, Cong Wang², Bojie Fu³

¹State Key Laboratory of Regional and Urban Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100085, Beijing, China.

Journal of Environmental Management

|March 1, 2026

Summary

Plant diversity is crucial for dryland ecosystem health. Increasing aridity amplifies the benefits of local plant diversity (α diversity) for soil functions, while reducing the impact of spatial diversity (β diversity).

Keywords:

Aridity Drylands Functional traits Soil multifunctionality α-diversity β-diversity

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Environmental Science
Biodiversity Research

Background:

Dryland ecosystems face increasing aridity and plant diversity loss, threatening ecosystem multifunctionality.
Understanding the scale-dependent effects of plant diversity (α and β) on ecosystem functions under changing environmental conditions is limited.
Ecosystem multifunctionality refers to the capacity of ecosystems to simultaneously sustain multiple functions.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the effects of plant α-diversity and β-diversity on soil multifunctionality across a large aridity gradient in China's drylands.
To examine how the relationships between plant diversity and soil multifunctionality change with intensifying aridity.
To assess the combined impacts of plant α- and β-diversity on soil multifunctionality under aridity stress.

Main Methods:

Measured 12 soil variables related to carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling and storage to characterize soil functions.
Quantified soil multifunctionality using both averaging and multiple threshold approaches.
Analyzed shifts in plant α- and β-diversity effects on soil multifunctionality along a 3200 km aridity gradient.

Main Results:

Both plant α-diversity and β-diversity promote soil multifunctionality, but the positive effect of α-diversity increases with aridity, while β-diversity's contribution decreases.
Complementarity and facilitation processes become more important than competition as plant water stress tolerance increases.
Plant α-diversity can enhance β-diversity, leading to synergistic improvements in soil multifunctionality.

Conclusions:

Biodiversity conservation across multiple scales is essential for maintaining dryland ecosystem multifunctionality.
Findings provide insights for developing aridity-specific biodiversity conservation policies.
Plant diversity, at both local and spatial scales, is critical for soil functions in drylands facing increasing aridity.