Microbial life-history strategies regulate soil organic carbon formation and stability across soil depths during 300 years of the temperate forest succession
December 2026
Forest succession profoundly reshapes soil organic carbon (SOC) persistence, yet the depth-dependent microbial mechanisms governing particulate organic carbon (POC) and mineral-associated organic carbon...
Altitudinal variation in drought resilience of Tianshan spruce (Picea schrenkiana) in the Middle Tianshan Mountains, China
August 2026
Understanding how forest resilience varies with altitude is critical for predicting drought responses in mountain ecosystems. As a major water source for arid Central Asia, the Tianshan Mountains have...
Species trait dissimilarity dominates the mixing effects of forest plantations across stand development stages
December 2026
Mixed-species plantations are increasingly adopted as they may exhibit higher productivity and carbon sequestration potential under suitable species mixtures and management. Assessing the mixing effects...
Meta-analysis of 21st century studies shows that deforestation induces profound changes in soil characteristics, particularly soil organic carbon accumulation
April 2025
Deforestation is one of the most serious environmental problems facing humankind. It continues to escalate rapidly across many regions of the world, thereby deteriorating the forest soil quality. This...
Continental-scale mapping of forest tree density in North America using remote sensing and deep learning with uncertainty quantification
August 2026
Accurate, spatially consistent estimates of tree density remain elusive at continental scales, limiting our ability to assess forest structure, carbon stocks, and biodiversity. Existing global assessments...
A global meta-analysis reveals coupled biogeochemical and microbial successional trajectories in forest soils
August 2026
Forest succession fundamentally reshapes soil biogeochemistry and the resident microbial communities, yet a synthesis of global response patterns has been hindered by methodological inconsistencies...
Characterizing reference sites to inform restoration of the last remnants of the endangered Nothofagus alessandrii forest ecosystem
August 2026
The ecological restoration of threatened ecosystems is a global priority, particularly for those with only a few remaining intact fragments. A critical first step in restoring such ecosystems is the...
Severe droughts alter the resistance–recovery tradeoff in the drylands of northern China
August 2026
Increasing drought intensity under global climate change poses significant threats to the stability of terrestrial vegetation carbon uptake, represented by net primary productivity (NPP), particularly...
Dominant species stability outweighs species asynchrony and diversity in regulating temperate forest regeneration
August 2026
Climate change increasingly threatens forest regeneration by disrupting seedling dynamics, yet the stabilizing mechanisms underpinning these critical early life stages remain poorly understood. Using...
Microbial necromass underpins long-term soil carbon stability and ecosystem carbon persistence in pine reforestations
August 2026
The long-term carbon (C) sequestration potential of plantations hinges on the dynamics and persistence of mature forest C sinks, yet how C storage and stability evolve with increasing forest age remains...
Divergent growth patterns and climate constraints of Scots pine across three typical climate types in Eurasia
August 2026
Global large-scale afforestation is seen as an effective strategy to restore ecosystems and mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon. However, ongoing global warming and hotter droughts have triggered...
Understory functional trait adaptation to climate change is primarily mediated by soil conditions under long-term afforestation on the Loess Plateau
August 2026
Soil and climate conditions drive plant trait variation in natural ecosystems. However, afforestation induces rapid and significant shifts in these environmental drivers. Yet the extent to which such...
Understanding flash drought variations in China's planted and natural forests through machine learning counterfactual analysis
August 2026
China's rapid forestation over the past decades has reshaped regional ecohydrology and raised concerns of intensifying drought. Here, we explore the historical drought variations and driving factors...
Environmental heterogeneity regulates species-area relationships through the spatial distribution of species
2022
Species-area relationships (SARs), also known as species-area curves, are fundamental scaling tools for biodiversity research. Sampling design and taxonomic groups affect the widely cited forms of species-area...
Potential for improved groundwater recharge and dry-season flows through forest landscape restoration on degraded lands in the tropics
December 2025
As interest in tropical forest restoration accelerates, understanding its hydrological implications is increasingly urgent. While concerns persist that reforestation will reduce annual water yields—particularly...
Effects of habitat fragmentation on multiple ecosystem functions in urban remnant forests
April 2026
Urbanization-driven habitat fragmentation threatens ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) in remnant forests through biodiversity erosion. This study investigates the effects of habitat fragmentation on...
Dendrochronological evidence of extreme droughts in the forest-steppe of Western Siberia
December 2026
Current climate models project an increased frequency and intensity of droughts in the Eurasian forest-steppe. Although forests in this area are at risk from increasing aridization, our understanding...
The patterns of forest soil particulate and mineral associated organic carbon characteristics with latitude and soil depth across eastern China
April 2025
Forest ecosystems function as the largest carbon (C) sink in terrestrial ecosystems, and nearly half of the C in forest ecosystems is stored in forest soils. However, the patterns of two main fractions...
Old-growth mixed beech-dominated forests continue accumulating carbon with advancing age
April 2026
Old-growth forests uniquely support biodiversity while serving as some of the planet's most important carbon stocks. The influence of tree and stand age on carbon flux dynamics remains debated—an urgent...
Bryophytes as bioindicators in natural pine forests on mineral soils in Poland
August 2026
Although bryophytes are often underrepresented in vegetation classifications, our study demonstrates their crucial role in differentiating pine forest communities and highlights their untapped potential...
Aquaculture stress destabilizes iron–organic carbon coupling and alters nitrogen pathways in mangrove soils
August 2026
Mangrove carbon sequestration and nitrogen removal processes are threatened by coastal aquaculture, but the underlying biogeochemical mechanisms remain poorly understood. Using geochemical profiling,...
Disentangling the determinants of and mapping the root-to-shoot ratio of Chinese forest ecosystems
August 2026
The root-to-shoot ratio (R/S) is a key parameter for estimating forest carbon stocks and modeling carbon cycles at global and regional scales. We compiled a large dataset (n = 7,980) from Chinese forest...
Disentangling sampling bias to generate early-warning surfaces of forest ecological sensitivity: An integrated MaxEnt–CatBoost framework
December 2026
Biodiversity models often rely on opportunistic species occurrence data. However, biases due to different sampling efforts or accessibility can confound biodiversity patterns and obscure ecologically...
Canopy and understory nitrogen additions differentially regulate soil organic carbon fractions via litter–microbe–mineral interactions
April 2026
The effects of nitrogen (N) deposition on forest soil organic carbon (SOC) are largely unclear, likely due to the divergent responses of particulate (POC) and mineral-associated carbon (MAOC). Conventional...
Extraction of eucalyptus age and estimation of its aboveground biomass in China with the integration of empirical model and machine learning algorithm
August 2026
Eucalyptus plantations are extensively distributed in tropical and subtropical regions and play important roles in timber production, economic development, and regional carbon cycles. Due to its fast...