Global Change Biology

Global climate warming poses a serious threat to wheat production. Existing studies have primarily focused on the impact of heat stress on wheat yield, but the effect on its quality remains uncertain, especially at a global scale. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a global meta-analysis integrating 1976 observations from 95 peer-reviewed studies, encompassing nine key wheat quality traits.…

Rice sustains nearly half of the global population, yet its nitrogen (N) use efficiency remains low, undermining both food security and environmental integrity. Rice predominantly absorbs ammonium (NH₄ ⁺), which is readily nitrified and lost through irrigation and drainage, posing a persistent management challenge. Integrating 1756 paired field observations and global modell…

Microbial residues are fundamental to the long-term stabilization of soil organic carbon (SOC). Intensively used alpine grasslands are subject to degradation under climate change, which may profoundly reshape microbial life-history strategies and SOC accumulation. However, the mechanisms by which grassland degradation influences the accumulation of different microbial residues and by which microb…

Global fluvial ecosystems are increasingly impacted by human activities, such as climate warming and land use changes; however, the combined effects of these pressures on river greenhouse gas (GHG) supersaturation and deoxygenation remain poorly understood. This study modeled past global trends (2002-2022) in river GHG saturation, dissolved oxygen (DO) levels, water temperature, and eight other w…

Trees associated with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) or ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi create distinct soil environments that influence organic matter accumulation, decomposition, and persistence. As forest composition changes globally, understanding how shifts in mycorrhizal dominance affect soil carbon (C) cycling becomes increasingly important. Priming effects, where fresh C inputs alter the decompo…

Rising global temperatures threaten species with environmental sex determination by skewing population sex ratios. However, predictions of demographic collapse often overlook the potential for multigenerational adaptation mechanisms. Here, we investigated the transgenerational impacts of elevated temperature on sex ratios and reproductive physiology in the European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax)…

Phenological shifts are a pervasive response to climate change but remain poorly understood in the hyperdiverse tropics. Combining comprehensive multitrophic datasets and in situ meteorological data, we test classic hypotheses linking reproduction to the timing and magnitude of rainfall across trophic levels in tropical birds. In low-latitude mountains, breeding was primarily seasonal and varied …

Arctic tundra soils can act as an important sink for atmospheric methane (CH₄). However, the role and magnitude of this process, and how it will change during future climate scenarios, are poorly understood. The vegetation is changing with a warmer Arctic climate, with taller plants, more shrubs, and altered vegetation patterns. These changes are predicted to be strongest in moist to w…

Extensive knowledge exists on plant-species traits and functions, but we understand less about how population- or community-level emergent traits influence ecosystem functioning. This knowledge gap is important for ecosystems like peatlands, arid drylands, salt marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangroves, where emergent traits of plant communities can create plant-environment feedbacks that amplify …

Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycling are crucial for terrestrial ecosystem productivity and carbon sequestration. While biodiversity is known to regulate soil N and P availability, the mechanistic linkages between biodiversity and fundamental processes of nutrient cycles remain unclear. This knowledge gap limits our capacity to model ecosystem biogeochemical responses to biodiversity loss. Usi…

Plant functional traits moderate ecosystem responses to climate and exchanges of water and carbon between the land surface and the atmosphere. However, the extent to which diversity in functional traits influences global carbon and hydrological cycles is a major unknown. The scaling gap between site-level analyses and global biogeochemical cycling makes it difficult to develop informed protocols …

Biological invasions severely threaten ecosystems and their underlying drivers remain a subject of ongoing inquiry in ecology. Four mutually exclusive invasion hypotheses, biotic acceptance and resistance hypotheses and Darwin's preadaptation and naturalization hypotheses, have long drawn extensive attention. Furthermore, human activities and environmental factors are also widely recognized as ke…

Permafrost forests harbor vast, climate-sensitive carbon (C) reservoirs whose vulnerability largely depends on temperature sensitivity of microbial respiration (Q₁₀). However, substantial uncertainties persist in predicting Q₁₀ patterns due to complex interactions among multiple ecological factors. Here, we conducted a standardized field survey with controlled incubations ac…

Freshwaters face increasing pressures from chemical, hydrological and climatic changes, yet tools for assessing their condition remain limited. River biofilms, composed of diverse microbial communities, integrate environmental signals over space and time, making them sensitive indicators of river health. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing of more than 1600 biofilms collected across a national river n…

Carbon efflux (C_efflux) makes up 20% of total greenhouse gases emitted globally. Accurate global C_efflux is critical for projecting and responding to future global warming. However, current C_efflux estimates remain incomplete due to the omission of C_efflux released from the dissolution of inorganic carbon in calcareous soils (C<sub>efflux-calcareous</su…

Biological invasions are a major driver of global change, and prevention is the most effective mitigation strategy. Bioclimatic species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used to estimate invasion risk, assuming that species retain their realized native climatic niches after introduction. We tested this assumption for 194 alien mammal species established across 11 zoogeographic realms, examini…

Earthworms play a dual role in the global carbon cycle: they accelerate organic matter decomposition yet are often associated with greater soil organic carbon (SOC) storage. However, uncertainty regarding the mechanisms and magnitudes through which earthworms concurrently influence SOC mineralization and stabilization has limited the integration of soil fauna into carbon models. Here, we synthesi…

Tropical peatland wildfire incidence has risen in recent decades, driven by drainage for land use and intensified by severe droughts with global climate change. These disturbances have altered vegetation structure, disrupted ecosystem functioning, and increased carbon emissions, particularly in Southeast Asia. However, the long-term history and characteristics of wildfires in tropical peatlands r…

Land-atmosphere exchanges are mediated by biophysical properties (e.g., albedo change, evaporative cooling) and biogeochemical cycle (e.g., CO₂ fluxes), with both processes exerting global feedback as radiative forcing ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:semantics><mml:mrow><mml:mi>RF</mml:mi></mml:mrow> <mml:annotation>$$ RF $$</mml:annotation></mml:semant…

Soil organic carbon (SOC) can persist from days to millennia but remains vulnerable to carbon (C) loss upon disturbances, depending on environmental conditions and mode of stabilization. Understanding drivers of persistence and vulnerability is crucial to assess soil C sequestration as well as potential SOC losses due to changes in climate and land use. Here, we investigate SOC persistence and vu…