The DOI matches its Crossref record; 30 of the 30 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Effects of plant diversity on soil carbon in diverse ecosystems: a global meta‐analysis
Abstract
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a valuable resource for mediating global climate change and securing food production. Despite an alarming rate of global plant diversity loss, uncertainties concerning the effects of plant diversity on SOC remain, because plant diversity not only stimulates litter inputs via increased productivity, thus enhancing SOC, but also stimulates microbial respiration, thus reducing SOC. By analysing 1001 paired observations of plant mixtures and corresponding monocultures from 121 publications, we show that both SOC content and stock are on average 5 and 8% higher in species mixtures than in monocultures. These positive mixture effects increase over time and are more pronounced in deeper soils. Microbial biomass carbon, an indicator of SOC release and formation, also increases, but the proportion of microbial biomass carbon in SOC is lower in mixtures. Moreover, these species‐mixture effects are consistent across forest, grassland, and cropland systems and are independent of background climates. Our results indicate that converting 50% of global forests from mixtures to monocultures would release an average of 2.70 Pg C from soil annually over a period of 20 years: about 30% of global annual fossil‐fuel emissions. Our study highlights the importance of plant diversity preservation for the maintenance of soil carbon sequestration in discussions of global climate change policy.
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Cites
Soil Carbon Sequestration Impacts on Global Climate Change and Food Security
Lal, R. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1097396 · Cited by 8,376
Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity
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“…loss of global plant diversity has promoted the question of how changes in biodiversity will affect ecosystem function and their provision of goods and services to humanity (Tilman, Wedin, & Knops, 1996; Cardinale et al., 2012; van Groenigen et al., 2014; Newbold et al., 2015; Isbell et al., 2017).”
BackgroundPersistence of soil organic matter as an ecosystem property
Schmidt, M. W. I., Torn, M. S., Abiven, S., Dittmar, T., Guggenberger, G., Janssens, I. A., Kleber, M., Kögel-Knabner, I., Lehmann, J., Manning, D. A. C., et al. (2011) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature10386 · Cited by 6,057
The meta-analysis of response ratios in experimental ecology
Hedges, L. V., Gurevitch, J., & Curtis, P. S. (1999) · Ecology · doi:10.1890/0012-9658(1999)080[1150:tmaorr]2.0.co;2 · Cited by 4,704
Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity
Newbold, T., Hudson, L. N., Hill, S. L. L., Contu, S., Lysenko, I., Senior, R. A., Börger, L., Bennett, D. J., Choimes, A., Collen, B., et al. (2015) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature14324 · Cited by 4,352
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Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences
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Productivity and sustainability influenced by biodiversity in grassland ecosystems.
Tilman, D., Wedin, D., & Knops, J. (1996) · Nature · doi:10.1038/379718a0 · Cited by 2,803
Diversity and Productivity in a Long-Term Grassland Experiment
Tilman, D., Reich, P. B., Knops, J., Wedin, D., Mielke, T., & Lehman, C. (2001) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1060391 · Cited by 2,373
Stability of organic carbon in deep soil layers controlled by fresh carbon supply
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Cited by
Positive but variable effects of crop diversification on biodiversity and ecosystem services
Beillouin, D., Ben‐Ari, T., Malézieux, E., Seufert, V., & Makowski, D. (2021) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.15747 · Cited by 590
Tree diversity increases decadal forest soil carbon and nitrogen accrual
Chen, X., Taylor, A. R., Reich, P. B., Hisano, M., Chen, H. Y. H., & Chang, S. X. (2023) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-023-05941-9 · Cited by 283
Self-citationYang, Y., Chen, X., Liu, L., Li, T., Dou, Y., Qiao, J., Wang, Y., An, S., & Chang, S. X. (2022) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.16361 · Cited by 279
Self-citationMortensen, E. Ø., Abalos, D., & Rasmussen, J. (2025) · Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment · doi:10.1016/j.agee.2025.109578 · Cited by 22
Metadata
- Authors
- Chen, X., Chen, H. Y. H., Chen, C., Ma, Z., Searle, E. B., Yu, Z., & Huang, Z.
- Venue
- Biological Reviews
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2019-10-18
- Volume
- 95
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 167-183
- ISSN
- 0006-3231 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-7931
- 1469-185X
- OpenAlex
- W2981112915
- Cited by
- 251
- References
- 30
- FWCI
- 2.61
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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