Yiqi Luo

Northern Arizona University | NAU · Center for Ecosystem Science and Society

The current generation of biogeochemical models produce large uncertainty in carbon-climate feedback projections. Structural differences in these models have been identified as a major source of inter-model uncertainties when simulating soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics worldwide. However, parameterization could also play a role, particularly when...

Because of global warming, Earth’s ecosystems have been experiencing more frequent and severe heatwaves. Heatwaves are expected to tip terrestrial carbon sequestration by elevating ecosystem respiration and suppressing gross primary productivity (GPP). Here, using the convergent cross-mapping technique, this study detected positive bidirectional ca...

Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) loading alters soil ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) abundances, likely leading to substantial changes in soil nitrification. However, the factors and mechanisms determining the responses of soil AOA:AOB and nitrification to N loading are still unclear, making it difficult to predict future changes in so...

In their commentary, Xiao et al. cautioned that the conclusions on the critical role of microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) in global soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in a paper by Tao et al. (2023) might be too simplistic. They claimed that Tao et al.’s study lacked mechanistic consideration of SOC formation and excluded important datasets. Xia...

Potassium (K ⁺ ) is the most abundant inorganic cation in plant cells, playing a critical role in various plant functions. However, the impacts of K on natural terrestrial ecosystems have been less studied compared with nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Here, we present a global meta‐analysis aimed at quantifying the response of aboveground producti...

Grassland and other herbaceous communities cover significant portions of Earth's terrestrial surface and provide many critical services, such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, and food production. Forecasts of global change impacts on these services will require predictive tools, such as process‐based dynamic vegetation models. Yet, model...

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...

In the accompanying Comment, He et al. argue that the determinant role of microbial carbon use efficiency in global soil organic carbon (SOC) storage shown in Tao et al. (2023) was overestimated because carbon inputs were neglected in our data analysis while they suggest that our model-based analysis could be biased and model-dependent. Their argum...

Numerical models have been developed to investigate and understand responses of biogeochemical cycle to global changes. Steady state, when a system is in dynamic equilibrium, is generally required to initialize these model simulations. However, the spin‐up process that is used to achieve steady state pose a great burden to computational resources,...

Ecosystem respiration (ER) is among the largest carbon fluxes between the biosphere and the atmosphere. Understanding the temperature response of ER is crucial for predicting the climate change-carbon cycle feedback. However, whether there is an apparent optimum temperature of ER ([Formula: see text]) and how it changes with temperature remain poor...

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...

Future global changes will impact carbon (C) fluxes and pools in most terrestrial ecosystems and the feedback of terrestrial carbon cycling to atmospheric CO2. Determining the vulnerability of C in ecosystems to future environmental change is thus vital for targeted land management and policy. The C capacity of an ecosystem is a function of its C i...

Climate change leads to increasing temperature and more extreme hot and drought events. Ecosystem capability to cope with climate warming depends on vegetation's adjusting pace with temperature change. How environmental stresses impair such a vegetation pace has not been carefully investigated. Here we show that dryness substantially dampens vegeta...

Aim Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are widely distributed soil organisms that play critical roles in ecosystem functions. However, little is known about their global distribution and the underlying mechanisms. Here, we aimed to explore distribution pattern and key predictors of AMF diversity and abundance at the global scale. Location Global....

Aim: This study aimed to infer the allocation of belowground net primary productivity (BNPP) to sequential soil depths down to 2 m across the globe at a 1 km resolution and assess underlying environmental drivers. Location: Global. Time Period: Contemporary (1932-2017). Major Taxa Studied: Terrestrial plants. Methods: Global datasets including...

Soils store more carbon than other terrestrial ecosystems1,2. How soil organic carbon (SOC) forms and persists remains uncertain1,3, which makes it challenging to understand how it will respond to climatic change3,4. It has been suggested that soil microorganisms play an important role in SOC formation, preservation and loss5–7. Although microorgan...

Abstract Significant land greening since the 1980s has been detected through satellite observation, forest inventory, and Earth system modeling. However, whether and to what extent global land greening enhances ecosystem carbon stock remains uncertain. Here, using 40 global models, we first detected a positive correlation between the terrestrial ec...

Extreme climate events, such as severe droughts and heavy rainfall, have profound impacts on the sustainable provision of ecosystem functions and services. However, how N enrichment interacts with discrete extreme climate events to affect ecosystem functions is largely unknown. Here, we investigated the responses of the temporal stability (i.e., re...

Rising atmospheric CO2 concentration triggers an emergent phenomenon called plant photosynthetic acclimation to elevated CO2 (PAC). PAC is often characterized by a reduction in leaf photosynthetic capacity (Asat ), which varies dramatically along the continuum of plant phylogeny. However, it remains unclear whether the mechanisms responsible for PA...

Peatlands contain one-third of global soil carbon (C), but the responses of peatland ecosystems to long-term warming are not well understood. Here, we pursue an emergent understanding of warming effects on ecosystem C fluxes at peatlands by constraining a process-oriented model, the Terrestrial ECOsystem (TECO) model, with observation data from a l...

Nitrogen (N) limitation greatly constrains terrestrial ecosystem carbon (C) uptake and its response to climate change and elevated carbon dioxide. Hence, accurate assessments of ecosystem N limitation are crucial for predicting C-N feedbacks, and vital for providing guidance for policy making or ecosystem management as well. This study aims to retr...

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...

Phosphorus is an essential element for plant metabolism and growth, but its future supply under elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 remains uncertain. Here we present measurements of phosphorus concentration from two long-term (15 and 9 years) rice free air carbon dioxide enrichment experiments. Although no changes were observed in the initial year...

Carbon-nitrogen coupling is a fundamental principle in ecosystem ecology. However, how the coupling responds to global change has not yet been examined. Through a comprehensive and systematic literature review, we assessed how the dynamics of carbon processes change with increasing nitrogen input and how nitrogen processes change with increasing ca...

Natural revegetation has been reported to play a very active role in ecosystem carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) sinks in degenerated ecosystems. However, the responses of C and N sequestration and stabilization in soil organic matter (SOM) to natural revegetation remain inadequately understood. In this study, we analyzed C and N contents and δ¹³C and δ¹...

Soil represents the largest terrestrial carbon pool, and it liberates massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere via respiration, which can influence global carbon cycle. In recent decades, anthropogenic activities have dramatically increased the rates of atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition worldwide, but our current understanding of...

Plant secondary succession is a very effective approach for the rejuvenation of degraded ecosystems. In order to comprehend alterations and driving mechanisms of soil bacterial communities under secondary succession of old-field and reveal their subsequent impacts on the decomposition and accumulation of soil organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (SON)...

Laboratory incubation is a commonly used method to measure the decomposition of soil organic carbon (SOC). While incubation experiments are conducted across a wide range of durations that may vary from hours to years, no method is available to determine an optimal duration of the incubation experiment so that SOC decomposition can be best understoo...

Abstract Soil microbial community's responses to climate warming alter the global carbon cycle. In temperate ecosystems, soil microbial communities function along seasonal cycles. However, little is known about how the responses of soil microbial communities to warming vary when the season changes. In this study, we investigated the seasonal dynami...

Respiratory effluxes of carbon (C) from the soil to the atmosphere are expected to rise with temperature, potentially intensifying future climate warming. However, whether and how this increase would be sustained under long-term warming is not well understood. Here, we combined a manipulation experiment in an alpine meadow with a global meta-analysi...

Natural revegetation has been widely confirmed to be an effective strategy for the restoration of degraded lands, particularly in terms of rehabilitating ecosystem productivity and soil nutrients. Yet the mechanisms of how natural revegetation influences the variabilities and drivers of soil residing fungal communities, and its downstream effects o...

Future global changes will impact carbon (C) fluxes and pools in most terrestrial ecosystems and the feedback of terrestrial carbon cycling to atmospheric CO2. Determining the vulnerability of ecosystems to future changes in C is thus vital for targeted land management and policy. The C capacity of an ecosystem (XC) is a function of its C inputs (e...

The spatial and temporal variations in terrestrial carbon storage play a pivotal role in regulating future climate change. However, Earth system models (ESMs), which have coupled the terrestrial biosphere and atmosphere, show great uncertainty in simulating the global land carbon storage. Here, based on multiple global datasets and a traceability a...

Temperature response of gross primary productivity (GPP) is a well-known property of ecosystem, but GPP at the optimum temperature (GPP_Topt) has not been fully discussed. Our understanding of how GPP_Topt responds to warming and water availability is highly limited. In this study, we analyzed data at 326 globally distributed eddy covariance sites...

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...

The terrestrial carbon (C) cycle is shifting to a state of dynamic disequilibrium under a rapid global climate change. However, the magnitude of such disequilibrium is inherently hard to measure directly. Abundant studies have revealed that the availability of nutrients, particularly nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), constrains ecosystem productivit...

Natural restoration of vegetation has been widely implemented as an effective strategy for recovery of degraded ecosystems. However, how soil microbial communities vary with natural restoration of vegetation and associated drivers remains unclear. Here, we investigated the changes in soil microbial communities at 0–60 cm soil depths along ~160 year...

Aim Fresh carbon (C) inputs to the soil can have important consequences for the decomposition rates of soil organic matter (priming effect), thereby impacting the delicate global C balance at the soil–atmosphere interface. Yet, the environmental factors that control soil priming effect intensity remain poorly understood at a global scale. Location...

Understanding the dynamics of peatland methane (CH4) emissions and quantifying sources of uncertainty in estimating peatland CH4 emissions are critical for mitigating climate change. The relative contributions of CH4 emission pathways through ebullition, plant-mediated transport, and diffusion, together with their different transport rates and vuln...

Background and aim As global climate change intensifies, the frequency and duration of extreme droughts are predicted to increase, resulting in extended periods of reduced soil water availability across ecosystems. The allocation of carbon (C) to above- and below-ground plant biomass is a fundamental ecosystem property that varies spatially and tem...

The precise estimation of global nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions in nitrogen cycling will facilitate improved projections of future climate change. However, the geographical variations and the primary controlling factors of N2O emissions remain elusive at the global scale. What is lacking is their specific evaluation based on field data. We compiled...

Plant stoichiometry and nutrient allocation can reflect a plant’s adaptation to environmental nutrient changes. However, the allocation strategies of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) between leaf and fine root in response to wildfire have been poorly studied. Our primary objective was to elucidate the trade-off of elemental allocation b...

Fertilization plays an important role in changing soil microbial diversity, which is essential for determining crop yields. Yet, the influence of organic amendments on microbial diversity remains uncertain, and few studies have addressed the relative importance of microbial diversity versus other drivers of crop yields. Here, we synthesize 219 stud...

Carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) coupling processes in terrestrial ecosystems have the potential to modify the sensitivity of the global C cycle to climate change. But the degree to which C–N interactions contribute to the sequestration of terrestrial ecosystem C (Cseq), both now and in the future, remains uncertain. Methods In this study we used a met...

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...

Microbial necromass carbon (MNC) is an important contributor to soil organic carbon. The influence of lithology on MNC remains unclear. MNC is often regarded as a stable, uniform entity, but little consideration has been given to its unprotected and protected fractions. We measured MNC contents in particulate organic matter, which represents the un...

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 denitrification process profoundly affects soil nitrogen (N) availability and generates its byproduct, nitrous oxide, as a potent greenhouse gas. There are large uncertainties in predicting global denitrification because its controlling factors remain elusive. In this study, we compiled 4301 observations of denitrification rates across a variet...

Aim: Climate warming and biodiversity loss both alter plant productivity, yet we lack an understanding of how biodiversity regulates the responses of ecosystems to warming. In this study, we examine how plant diversity regulates the responses of grassland productivity to experimental warming using meta-analytic techniques. Location: Global. Maj...

Understanding the dynamics of peatland methane (CH4) emissions and quantifying sources of uncertainty in estimating peatland CH4 emissions are critical for mitigating climate change. The relative contributions of CH4 emission pathways through ebullition, plant-mediated transport, and diffusion together with their different transport rates and vulne...

Unprecedented nitrogen (N) inputs into terrestrial ecosystems have profoundly altered soil N cycling. Ammonia oxidizers and denitrifiers are the main producers of nitrous oxide (N2O), but it remains unclear how ammonia oxidizer and denitrifier abundances will respond to N loading and whether their responses can predict N-induced changes in soil N2O...

Drought, defined as a marked deficiency of precipitation relative to normal, occurs as periods of below-average precipitation or complete failure of precipitation inputs, and can be limited to a single season or prolonged over multiple years. Grasslands are typically quite sensitive to drought, but there can be substantial variability in the magnit...

Background An increasing number of ecological processes have been incorporated into Earth system models. However, model evaluations usually lag behind the fast development of models, leading to a pervasive simulation uncertainty in key ecological processes, especially the terrestrial carbon (C) cycle. Traceability analysis provides a theoretical ba...

Soil respiration, the major pathway for ecosystem carbon (C) loss, has the potential to enter a positive feedback loop with the atmospheric CO2 due to climate warming. For reliable projections of climate-carbon feedbacks, accurate quantification of soil respiration and identification of mechanisms that control its variability are essential. Process...

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...

Increasing tropospheric concentrations of ozone (e[O3]) and carbon dioxide (e[CO2]) profoundly perturb terrestrial ecosystem functions through carbon and nitrogen cycles, affecting beneficial services such as their capacity to combat climate change and provide food. However, the interactive effects of e[O3] and e[CO2] on these functions and service...

Aim Tropical ecosystems have grown increasingly prone to fire over the last century. However, no consensus has yet emerged regarding the effects of fire disturbances on tropical biogeochemical cycles. Location Tropics. Time period 1960–2018. Major taxa studied Tropical ecosystems: Above- and below-ground carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics. Me...

Land degradation and restoration strongly influence terrestrial soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics. However, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Here, based on a meta-analysis of 803 observations from 138 studies worldwide, our data analyses suggest that C-degrading enzymes play a crucial role in regulating SOC dynamics under land de...

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...