Influence of multiple global change drivers on terrestrial carbon storage: additive effects are common

Abstract

The interactive effects of multiple global change drivers on terrestrial carbon (C) storage remain poorly understood. Here, we synthesise data from 633 published studies to show how the interactive effects of multiple drivers are generally additive (i.e. not differing from the sum of their individual effects) rather than synergistic or antagonistic. We further show that (1) elevated CO , warming, N addition, P addition and increased rainfall, all exerted positive individual effects on plant C pools at both single-plant and plant-community levels; (2) plant C pool responses to individual or combined effects of multiple drivers are seldom scale-dependent (i.e. not differing from single-plant to plant-community levels) and (3) soil and microbial biomass C pools are significantly less sensitive than plant C pools to individual or combined effects. We provide a quantitative basis for integrating additive effects of multiple global change drivers into future assessments of the C storage ability of terrestrial ecosystems.

Responses of nitrogen concentrations and pools to multiple environmental change drivers: A meta‐analysis across terrestrial ecosystems

“…The effect of one environmental change driver or the combined effect of a driver pair was defined as the response of a variable (e.g., soil N concentration) in a treated sample compared with the value of that variable in the corresponding control (Yue, Fornara, Yang, Peng, Peng et al, ), and was described by lnRR (Hedges et al, ). The calculations of lnRR, the associated variance ( ν 1 ) and weight ( w 1 ) of each lnRR, and the weighted mean lnRR (lnRR ++ ) are described in detail in Supporting Information Text S1.…”

“…Multiple environmental change drivers likely act simultaneously and influence a wide range of ecological and biogeochemical processes (Reich et al, ; Yue, Fornara, Yang, Peng, Peng et al, ); thus, the combined effects of multiple drivers on N cycling may be more important than the corresponding individual effects. For instance, a recent meta‐analysis (Li, Niu, & Yu, ) showed how the combined effect of N and P additions on plant N concentration tends to be higher than their individual effects.…”

“…For example, the interactive effects of eCO 2 and warming on plant biomass were found to be non‐additive in a grassland manipulation experiment (Mueller et al, ), which agrees with a meta‐analysis across different ecosystem types (Dieleman et al, ). However, findings from other recent syntheses showed how eCO 2 , warming, N addition, P addition and altered rainfall regimes generally result in additive interactions between individual drivers for plant N concentrations, plant C:N:P stoichiometry and terrestrial C and P pools (Yuan & Chen, ; Yue, Fornara, Yang, Peng, Li et al, ; Yue, Fornara, Yang, Peng, Peng et al, ; Yue et al, ). These studies further suggested that the interactive effects of multiple environmental change drivers may vary substantially depending on the tested variables and combinations of drivers.…”

Climatic role of terrestrial ecosystem under elevated CO2: a bottom‐up greenhouse gases budget

“…), ultimately promoting terrestrial net primary production (NPP) and soil C storage (Yue et al . ). On the other hand, soil C input enhanced by elevated atmospheric CO 2 may also increase soil CO 2 emissions, stimulating some soil C release back to the atmosphere (van Groenigen et al .…”

Increasing temperature within thermal limits compensates negative ultraviolet‐B radiation effects in terrestrial and aquatic organisms

“…Increased temperature may affect metabolic rates, reduce the abundance of habitat‐forming species, decrease ocean productivity, alter food web dynamics and shift species distributions in marine ecosystems (Hoegh‐Guldberg & Bruno, ), while in terrestrial ecosystems increased temperature has been found to influence carbon (Yue et al, ) and nitrogen (Bai et al, ) storage and increase biomass accumulation in plants (Lin, Xia, & Wan, ). Consequently, the increase in temperature may affect various aspects of the performance of aquatic and terrestrial organisms, including growth, survival, photosynthesis, metabolism (e.g., ethylene evolution, respiration transpiration) and development.…”