Enqing Hou

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Verified

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• PhD
• Research Professor at Chinese Academy of Sciences

Increasing nitrogen (N) fertilization does not proportionally increase crop production. The integrative application of knowledge-based N management by synchronizing crop N demand with N supply is effective for enhancing crop N uptake while reducing its losses to the environment.

More than 25 million tons per year of phosphorus (P) fertilizer from phosphate rock is applied to meet the increasing global food and wood demand despite limited phosphate rock reserves. Yet, the fate of applied inorganic P fertilizer and its drivers have never been systematically explored globally, although doing so can help improve P fertilizer u...

Phosphorus (P) limitation of aboveground plant production is usually assumed to occur in tropical regions but rarely elsewhere. Here we report that such P limitation is more widespread and much stronger than previously estimated. In our global meta-analysis, almost half (46.2%) of 652 P-addition field experiments reveal a significant P limitation o...

Climate is predicted to change over the 21st century. However, little is known about how climate change can affect soil phosphorus (P) cycle and availability in global terrestrial ecosystems, where P is a key limiting nutrient. With a global database of Hedley P fractions and key associated physiochemical properties of 760 (semi-natural) natural so...

Phosphorus limitation on terrestrial plant growth is being incorporated into Earth system models. The global pattern of terrestrial phosphorus limitation, however, remains unstudied. Here, we examined the global‐scale latitudinal pattern of terrestrial phosphorus limitation by analysing a total of 1068 observations of aboveground plant production r...

Acid rain, with 60% deposition in Asia, may exacerbate plant phosphorus (P) limitation; however, its long‐term effects on different plant life‐forms remain largely undetermined. Understanding these effects is essential for predicting ecosystem resilience and promoting forest health under environmental change. Herein, we investigated the P status in...

Subtropical forests store significant amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) and are important in the global C cycle. Current understandings based on controlled experiments indicate that phosphorus (P) availability promotes SOC decomposition by alleviating microbial P limitation or rendering SOC available for microbial decomposition. While no alterna...

Freeze–thaw cycles (FTCs) are the major seasonal environment stress in the temperate and boreal forests, which induces hydraulic dysfunction and limits tree growth and distribution. There are two types of FTCs in the field: FTCs with increasing temperature from winter to spring (spring FTCs); and FTCs with decreasing temperature from autumn to wint...

Microbes are the drivers of soil phosphorus (P) cycling in terrestrial ecosystems; however, the role of soil microbes in mediating P cycling in P‐rich soils during primary succession remains uncertain. This study examined the impacts of bacterial community structure (diversity and composition) and its functional potential (absolute abundances of P‐...

Despite fertilization efforts, phosphorus (P) availability in soils remains a major constraint to global plant productivity. Soil incorporation of biochar could promote soil P availability but its effects remain uncertain. To attain further improvements in soil P availability with biochar, we developed, characterized, and evaluated magnesium-oxide...

Plants may modify soil biogeochemical properties that facilitate their invasion of new sites which may be mediated by soil microorganisms. We compared microbially-mediated soil phosphorus (P) cycling among sites with different degrees of invasion by Wollastonia biflora and Chromolaena odorata on two coral islands. Wollas-tonia biflora and C. odorat...

Land use change (LUC) alters the global carbon (C) stock, but our estimation of the alteration remains uncertain and is a major impediment to predicting the global C cycle. The uncertainty is partly due to the limited number and geographical bias of observations, and limited exploration of its predictors. Here we generated a comprehensive global da...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is highly susceptible to land cover change. The assessment of SOC stabilization mechanisms is therefore crucial to understand the carbon (C) dynamic in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the mechanisms underlying the stabilization of SOC following forest conversion of primary natural broadleaf forests (BF) to secondary fores...

Numerous drivers such as farming practices, erosion, land-use change, and soil biogeochemical background, determine the global spatial distribution of phosphorus (P) in agricultural soils. Here, we revised an approach published earlier (called here GPASOIL-v0), in which several global datasets describing these drivers were combined with a process m...

Most phosphorus (P) in soils is unavailable for direct biological uptake, as it is locked within primary or secondary mineral particles, adsorbed to mineral surfaces, or immobilized inside of organic material. Deciphering the composition of different P forms in soil is critical for understanding P bioavailability and its underlying dynamics. Howeve...

River run-off has long been regarded as the largest source of organic-rich suspended particulate matter (SPM) in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), contributing to high turbidity, pollutant exposure and increasing vulnerability of coral reef to climate change. However, the terrestrial versus marine origin of the SPM in the GBR is uncertain. Here we prov...

The drivers of interannual variability (IAV) of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) in forested wetlands are poorly understood, making it difficult to predict changes in atmospheric fluxes in response to land use and climate change. Similarly, these ecosystems demonstrate dynamic physiological and phenological responses to climate over time yet are typica...

Extreme rainstorms can flush intertidal sediments and drive the transport of large amounts of organic matter from land to sea. Mangrove wetlands, one of the most important "blue carbon" habitats, are located in the intertidal zone and serve as an ecological corridor connecting land and sea. In this study, we investigated the effects of extreme rain...

Soil phosphorus (P) availability plays a critical role in sustaining ecosystem productivity during vegetation succession. However, our understanding of the factors driving soil P dynamics along this process, particularly in cold regions like the Tibetan Plateau, remains poorly limited. To address this, we sampled soils from four vegetation types al...

Many studies have explored the responses of soil carbon dioxide (CO2) emission to altered supplies of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N), while limited information exists on phosphorus (P). However, much less is known about its responses to altered supplies of other elements in soils. This study evaluated the response patterns of CO2 emissions to five lev...

Extensive ecological research has investigated extreme climate events or long-term changes in average climate variables, but changes in year-to-year (interannual) variability may also cause important biological responses, even if the mean climate is stable. The environmental stochasticity that is a hallmark of climate variability can trigger unexpe...

Besides carbon sequestration, biochar amendment in soils can regulate the loss of applied fertilizer-nitrogen (N) into the environment. Soil aggregates are essential in controlling soil N stocks’ stabilization and supply. However, unraveling the rate-dependent impact of biochar on stable soil aggregates and their associated N in fertilized soils ov...

Afforestation can substantially influence terrestrial carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphors (P) stocks by changing soil microbial properties and functions, but the direction and magnitude of the effects of afforestation on soil microbial properties and functions at global scales remain unknown. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis of 1292 paired ob...

Quantifying the stomatal responses of plants to global change factors is crucial for modeling terrestrial carbon and water cycles. Here we synthesize worldwide experimental data to show that stomatal conductance (gs) decreases with elevated carbon dioxide (CO2), warming, decreased precipitation, and tropospheric ozone pollution, but increases with...

Elucidating the sources of particulate organic matter (POM) is the foundation for understanding their fates and the seasonal variation of their movement from the land-to-ocean aquatic continuum (LOAC). The POM from different sources has different reactivity, which determines their fates. However, the key link between the sources and fates of POM, e...

Vulnerability segmentation (VS) and Hydraulic segmentation (HS) hypotheses propose higher hydraulic resistance and vulnerability to embolism in leaves than in branches, respectively. The VS and HS are suggested as an acclimation strategy of trees to drought stress, but whether they occur during freezing stress has rarely been explored. We measured...

Most phosphorus (P) in soils is unavailable for direct biological uptake as it is locked within primary or secondary mineral particles, adsorbed to mineral surfaces, or immobilized inside of organic material. Deciphering the composition of different P pools in soil is critical for understanding P bioavailability and its underlying dynamics. However...

Large across-model spread in simulating land carbon (C) dynamics has been ubiquitously demonstrated in model intercomparison projects (MIPs), and became a major impediment in advancing climate change prediction. Thus, it is imperative to identify underlying sources of the spread. Here we used a novel matrix approach to analytically pin down the sou...

Introducing N2‐fixing tree species into Eucalyptus plantations could replace nitrogen (N) fertilization to maintain high levels of N consumption and productivity. However, N enrichment may exacerbate phosphorus (P) limitation as Eucalyptus robusta Smith is extensively planted in P‐poor tropical and subtropical soils. We conducted a field experiment...

Introduction Soil organic carbon (SOC) accumulation changed with forest succession and hence impacted the SOC storage. However, the variation and underlying mechanisms about SOC during tropical forest succession are not fully understood. Methods Soil samples at four depths (0–10 cm, 10–20 cm, 20–40 cm and 40–60 cm), litter, and roots of 0–10 cm an...

Improving fertilizer-N retention and use efficiency (NUE) is imperative to mitigate the loss of reactive N into the environment. To reach additional improvements in N retention and NUE, we formulated MgO-and sepiolite-biochar nanocomposites with optimized N-retention capacity. The field-scale application of the modified bio-chars along with 15 N-la...

Lignin decomposition is critically linked to terrestrial carbon (C) cycle due to the enormous C mass of lignin and its importance in controlling initial rates of litter decomposition. Interactions between lignin and iron (Fe) minerals have been increasingly recognized as key mediators of lignin decomposition in experimental studies. However, we sti...

Land ecosystems contribute to climate change mitigation by taking up approximately 30% of anthropogenically emitted carbon. However, estimates of the amount and distribution of carbon uptake across the world's ecosystems or biomes display great uncertainty. The latter hinders a full understanding of the mechanisms and drivers of land carbon uptake,...

Foliar stable nitrogen (N) isotopes (δ15N) generally reflect N availability to plants and have been used to infer about changes thereof. However, previous studies of temporal trends in foliar δ15N have ignored the influence of confounding factors, leading to uncertainties on its indication to N availability. In this study, we measured foliar δ15N o...

The storage and dynamics of various soil phosphorus (P) fractions could determine soil P availability, and thus regulate terrestrial carbon cycle and its feedback to climate warming. However, little evidence is available about patterns and drivers of soil P fractions in alpine ecosystems which could play a crucial role in terrestrial carbon cycle....

The representation of phosphorus (P) cycling in global land models remains quite simplistic, particularly on soil inorganic phosphorus. For example, sorption and desorption remain unresolved and their dependence on soil physical and chemical properties is ignored. Empirical parameter values are usually based on expert knowledge or data from few sit...

Soil nutrients play critical roles in regulating and improving the sustainable development of economic forests. Consequently, an elucidation of the spatial patterns and drivers of soil nutrients in these forests is fundamental to their management. For this study, we collected 314 composite soils at a 0–30 cm depth from a typical hickory plantation...

Plain Language Summary Interactions between nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are important for plant growth and carbon (C) sequestration. While effects of N supply on P dynamics have been much studied, much less is known about the opposite (P‐effect on N). We conducted a meta‐analysis by compiling a total of 1,734 individual experimental observation...

Forestation is a key strategy to mitigate climate change caused by anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. However, the impacts of forestation on soil pH remain unclear, despite critical roles of soil pH in regulating key soil biogeochemical processes. Here, we collected a global dataset of soil pH change after forestation, which included 1082 obse...

Soil carbon (C) stocks are known to increase as a consequence of the forest succession of a pioneer pine forest (PF) to a pine and broad-leaved mixed forest (PBMF), and then to a monsoon evergreen broadleaf forest (MEBF). However, the underlying mechanisms of soil C stock accumulation along the succession of these subtropical forests remain unknown...

Abstract Grassland ecosystems provide essential services to society. To maintain ecosystem functions and services of grasslands under changing environments, it is critical to understand how grasslands respond and feedback to climate change. Here, we present results from a long‐term (16 years) warming and clipping (to mimic hay harvesting or grazing...

The soil organic carbon (C) cycle is primarily mediated by soil microorganisms and their genes that function in the C cycle (C-cycle genes), both of which are strongly affected by land cover disturbance. However, the mechanism underlying microbially mediated soil C loss after conversion of primary natural broadleaf forests (BF) to plantation forest...

Soil represents the largest phosphorus (P) stock in terrestrial ecosystems. Determining the amount of soil P is a critical first step in identifying sites where ecosystem functioning is potentially limited by soil P availability. However, global patterns and predictors of soil total P concentration remain poorly understood. To address this knowledg...

Impacts of nitrogen (N) enrichment on soil carbon (C) budgets in terrestrial ecosystems have been well documented by numerous field experiments and syntheses. Although previous studies have largely attributed this phenomenon to the increased organic C inputs, the potential mechanisms of how N enrichment increases soil organic C (SOC) remain content...

Rising atmospheric CO2 concentration ([CO2]) and nitrogen (N) deposition are changing plant growth, physiological characteristics, and chemical compositions; however, few studies have explored such impacts in a heavy-metal-contaminated environment. In this study, we conducted an open-top chamber experiment to explore the impacts of two years of ele...

PurposeSilicon (Si) is a beneficial element for plants and plays important roles in the biogeochemical cycle of mineral elements. Yet, few studies have focused on the impact of nitrogen (N) deposition on plant Si uptake and the Si biocycle.Methods We designed an experiment investigating canopy and understory N addition in a tropical forest to compr...

Background Countries have long been making efforts by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to mitigate climate change. In the agreements of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, involved countries have committed to reduction targets. However, carbon (C) sink and its involving processes by natural ecosystems remain difficult to qua...

Human activities have increasingly impacted rivers globally and influence environmental factors at multiple scales: proximal factors (e.g., light and nutrients) and distal controls (e.g., riparian cover and forest area in the basin) that affect benthic metabolism or algal assemblage structure. Function and structure have been studied separately and...

Terrestrial carbon sequestration is constrained by the supply of soil phosphorus (P). Climate and bedrock are two key independent drivers of soil P supply. Their potential interactions with soil P supply remains poorly understood. To address this issue, we examined the P status of subtropical forests in southern China along two adjacent elevational...

Drylands contain a third of the organic carbon stored in global soils; however, the long-term dynamics of soil organic carbon in drylands remain poorly understood relative to dynamics of the vegetation carbon pool. We examined long-term patterns in soil organic matter (SOM) against both climate and prescribed fire in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland i...

Human activities have increasingly impacted rivers globally and influence environmental factors at multiple scales: proximal factors (e.g., light and nutrients) and distal controls (e.g., riparian cover and forest area in the basin) that affect benthic metabolism or algal assemblage structure. Function and structure have been studied separately and...

Background: Soil nutrients play critical roles in regulating and improving the sustainable development of economic forests. Consequently, an elucidation of the spatial patterns and drivers of soil nutrients in these forests is fundamental to their management. For this study, we collected 314 composite soils at a 0-30 cm depth from a typical hickory...

Models are an important tool to predict Earth system dynamics. An accurate prediction of future states of ecosystems depends on not only model structures but also parameterizations. Model parameters can be constrained by data assimilation. However, applications of data assimilation to ecology are restricted by highly technical requirements such as...

Soils represent the largest phosphorus (P) reserves on land and determining the amount is a critical first step for identifying sites where ecosystem functioning is potentially limited by P availability. However, global patterns and predictors of soil total P concentration remain poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we constructed a da...

Aim Precipitation manipulation experiments have shown diverse terrestrial carbon (C) cycling responses when the ecosystem is subjected to different magnitudes of altered precipitation, various experimental durations or heterogeneity in local climate. However, how these factors combine to affect C cycle responses to changes in precipitation remains...

Interannual variability in precipitation has increased globally as climate warming intensifies. The increased variability impacts both terrestrial plant production and carbon (C) sequestration. However, mechanisms driving these changes are largely unknown. Here, we examined mechanisms underlying the response of aboveground net primary production (A...

Climate warming has been proposed to increase primary production of natural grasslands in cold regions. However, how climate warming affects the production of artificial pastures in cold regions remains unknown. To address this question, we used open-top chambers to simulate warming in a major artificial pasture (forage oat) on the cold Tibetan Pla...

Whether and how warming alters functional traits of absorptive plant roots remains to be answered across the globe. Tackling this question is crucial to better understanding terrestrial responses to climate change as fine‐root traits drive many ecosystem processes. We carried out a detailed synthesis of fine‐root trait responses to experimental war...

Models are an important tool to predict Earth system dynamics. An accurate prediction of future states depends on not only model structures but also parameterizations. Model parameters can be constrained by data assimilation. However, applications of data assimilation to ecology are restricted by highly technical requirements such as model-dependen...

China is experiencing a high level of atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition, which greatly affects the soil carbon (C) dynamics in terrestrial ecosystems. Soil aggregation contributes to the stability of soil structure and to soil C sequestration. Although many studies have reported the effects of N enrichment on bulk soil C dynamics, the underlying...

The rapid increases in atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition have greatly affected the carbon (C) cycles of terrestrial ecosystems. Most studies concerning on the effects of N deposition have simulated N deposition by directly applying N to the understory and have therefore not accounted for the possibility of N absorption, retention, and transformat...

Phosphorus (P) availability is a limiting factor for plant growth in tropical and subtropical regions, but many tropical and subtropical forests maintain high levels of productivity and biodiversity under P-limited conditions, which is why P limitation and plant community biomass increase simultaneously during succession in subtropical forests. Bio...

Purpose The response of forest soil organic carbon (SOC) to atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition is generally studied via understory N addition, whereas canopy processes are often ignored. This implies potential bias in the response to N addition. Experiments incorporating both understory and canopy N addition in forests can explore the consistency...

Quantifying carbon (C) dynamics with forest land-use change is essential for predicting C sequestration and stabilization. Here, we combined density fractionation and stable isotope analysis to examine soil C dynamics after primary native broadleaf forests (BF) were converted to secondary forests (SF) and plantation forests (PF). The results showed...

Large-scale primary native broadleaf forests (BF) have been converted to secondary forests (SF) and plantation forests (PF) in subtropical China over the past decades. However, how and what magnitude of plant and soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) stocks and stoichiometry are affected by forest conversion is still vague. Here, we add...

Atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition has substantial effects on forest ecosystems. The effects of N deposition on understorey plants have been simulated by spraying N on the forest floor. Such understorey addition of N (UAN) might simulate atmospheric N deposition in a biased manner, because it bypasses the canopy. We compared the effects of UAN and...

Changes in rainfall amounts and patterns have been observed and are expected to continue in the near future with potentially significant ecological and societal consequences. Modelling vegetation responses to changes in rainfall is thus crucial to project water and carbon cycles in the future. In this study, we present the results of a new model-da...

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...

The feedback between plant, soil and climate is partly determined by plant litter turnover time, which is influenced by climate, litter quality and soil properties. However, the spatial patterns of litter turnover time and its interrelation with these variables are rarely quantified. With a database of 1,378 litter turnover times and key associated...

Aim Our aim is to use elevational gradients to quantify the relationship between temperature and ecosystem functioning. Ecosystem functions such as decomposition, nutrient cycling and carbon storage are linked with the amount of microbial biomass in the soil. Previous studies have shown variable relationships between elevation and soil microbial bi...

The dynamics of soil phosphorus (P) control its bioavailability. Yet it remains a challenge to quantify soil P dynamics. Here we developed a soil P dynamics (SPD) model. We then assimilated eight data sets of 426‐day changes in Hedley P fractions into the SPD model, to quantify the dynamics of six major P pools in eight soil samples that are repres...

Fertilization is an important management strategy for crop yields by mediating soil fertility. However, rare studies quantitatively assessed the interactions among fertilization, crop yields, and soil fertility. Here, data from a 25-year fertilization experiment in the humid subtropical region of Southern China were used to evaluate and quantify th...