Aim Plant root traits regulate belowground C inputs, soil nutrient and water uptake, and play critical roles in determining sustainable plant production and consequences for ecosystem C storage. However, the effects of elevated CO2 on root morphology and function have not been well quantified. We reveal general patterns of root trait responses to elevated CO2 from field manipulative experiments.Location North America, Europe, Oceania, Asia. MethodsThe meta-analysis approach was used to examine the effects of CO2 elevation on 17 variables associated with root morphology, biomass size and distribution, C and N concentrations and pools, turnover and fungal colonization from 110 published studies.Results Elevated CO2 increased root length (+26.0%) and diameter (+8.4%). Elevated CO2 also stimulated total root (+28.8%), fine root (+27.7%) and coarse root biomass (+25.3%), demonstrating strong responses of root morphology and biomass. Elevated CO2 increased the root:shoot ratio (+8.5%) and decreased the proportion of roots in the topsoil (-8.4%), suggesting that plants expand rooting systems. In addition, elevated CO2 decreased N concentration (-7.1%), but did not affect C concentration, and thus increased the C:N ratio (+7.8%). Root C (+29.3%) increased disproportionately relative to root N pools (+9.4%) under elevated CO2. Functional traits were also strongly affected by elevated CO2, which increased respiration (+58.9%), rhizodeposition (+37.9%) and fungal colonization (+3.3%). Main conclusionsThese results suggest that elevated CO2 promoted root morphological development, root system expansion and C input to soils, implying that the sensitive responses of root morphology and function to elevated CO2 would increase long-term belowground C sequestration.

Soil microbial communities may be able to rapidly respond to changing environments in ways that change community structure and functioning, which could affect climate-carbon feedbacks. However, detecting microbial feedbacks to elevated CO(2) (eCO(2) ) or warming is hampered by concurrent changes in substrate availability and plant responses. Whether microbial communities can persistently feed back to climate change is still unknown. We overcame this problem by collecting microbial inocula at subfreezing conditions under eCO(2) and warming treatments in a semi-arid grassland field experiment. The inoculant was incubated in a sterilised soil medium at constant conditions for 30 days. Microbes from eCO(2) exhibited an increased ability to decompose soil organic matter (SOM) compared with those from ambient CO(2) plots, and microbes from warmed plots exhibited increased thermal sensitivity for respiration. Microbes from the combined eCO(2) and warming plots had consistently enhanced microbial decomposition activity and thermal sensitivity. These persistent positive feedbacks of soil microbial communities to eCO(2) and warming may therefore stimulate soil C loss.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that plant species diversity enhances ecosystem functioning in terrestrial ecosystems, including diversity effects on insect arthropods (herbivores, predators and parasitoids) and plants. Yet, the effects of increased plant diversity across trophic levels in different ecosystems and biomes have not yet been explored on a global scale. Through a global meta-analysis of 2914 observations from 351 studies, we found that increased plant species richness reduced herbivore abundance and damage but increased predator and parasitoid abundance, predation, parasitism, and overall plant performance. Moreover, increased predator/parasitoid performance was correlated with reduced herbivore abundance and enhanced plant performance. We

Rising levels of atmospheric CO frequently stimulate plant inputs to soil, but the consequences of these changes for soil carbon (C) dynamics are poorly understood. Plant-derived inputs can accumulate in the soil and become part of the soil C pool ("new soil C"), or accelerate losses of pre-existing ("old") soil C. The dynamics of the new and old pools will likely differ and alter the long-term fate of soil C, but these separate pools, which can be distinguished through isotopic labeling, have not been considered in past syntheses. Using meta-analysis, we found that while elevated CO (ranging from 550 to 800 parts per million by volume) stimulates the accumulation of new soil C in the short term (<1 year), these effects do not persist in the longer term (1-4 years). Elevated CO does not affect the decomposition or the size of the old soil C pool over either temporal scale. Our results are inconsistent with predictions of conventional soil C models and suggest that elevated CO might increase turnover rates of new soil C. Because increased turnover rates of new soil C limit the potential for additional soil C sequestration, the capacity of land ecosystems to slow the rise in atmospheric CO concentrations may be smaller than previously assumed.

Determining soil carbon (C) responses to rising temperature is critical for projections of the feedbacks between terrestrial ecosystems, C cycle, and climate change. However, the direction and magnitude of this feedback remain highly uncertain due largely to our limited understanding of the spatial heterogeneity of soil C decomposition and its temperature sensitivity. Here we quantified C decomposition and its response to temperature change with an incubation study of soils from 203 sites across tropical to boreal forests in China spanning a wide range of latitudes (18°16′ to 51°37′N) and longitudes (81°01′ to 129°28′E). Mean annual temperature (MAT) and mean annual precipitation primarily explained the biogeographic variation in the decomposition rate and temperature sensitivity of soils: soil C decomposition rate decreased from warm and wet forests to cold and dry forests, while Q10‐MAT (standardized to the MAT of each site) values displayed the opposite pattern. In contrast, biological factors (i.e. plant productivity and soil bacterial diversity) and soil factors (e.g. clay, pH, and C availability of microbial biomass C and dissolved organic C) played relatively small roles in the biogeographic patterns. Moreover, no significant relationship was found between Q10‐MAT and soil C quality, challenging the current C quality–temperature hypothesis. Using a single, fixed Q10‐MAT value (the mean across all forests), as is usually done in model predictions, would bias the estimated soil CO2 emissions at a temperature increase of 3.0°C. This would lead to overestimation of emissions in warm biomes, underestimation in cold biomes, and likely significant overestimation of overall C release from soil to the atmosphere. Our results highlight that climate‐related biogeographic variation in soil C responses to temperature needs to be included in next‐generation C cycle models to improve predictions of C‐climate feedbacks.