Drylands worldwide are experiencing rapid and extensive environmental change, concomitant with the encroachment of woody vegetation into grasslands. Woody encroachment leads to changes in both the structure and function of dryland ecosystems and has been shown to result in accelerated soil erosion and loss of soil nutrients. Covering 40% of the terrestrial land surface, dryland environments are of global importance, both as a habitat and a soil carbon store. Relationships between environmental change, soil erosion, and the carbon cycle are uncertain. There is a clear need to further our understanding of dryland vegetation change and impacts on carbon dynamics. Here two grass\uffe2\uff80\uff90to\uffe2\uff80\uff90woody ecotones that occur across large areas of the southwestern United States are investigated. This study takes a multidisciplinary approach, combining ecohydrological monitoring of structure and function and a dual\uffe2\uff80\uff90proxy biogeochemical tracing approach using the unique natural biochemical signatures of the vegetation. Results show that following woody encroachment, not only do these drylands lose significantly more soil and organic carbon via erosion but that this includes significant amounts of legacy organic carbon which would previously have been stable under grass cover. Results suggest that these dryland soils may not act as a stable organic carbon pool, following encroachment and that accelerated erosion of carbon, driven by vegetation change, has important implications for carbon dynamics.
", "keywords": ["2. Zero hunger", "soil erosion", "info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/550", "550", "04 agricultural and veterinary sciences", "15. Life on land", "01 natural sciences", "soil carbon pool", "13. Climate action", "biogeochemical tracing", "woody encroachment", "0401 agriculture", " forestry", " and fisheries", "Geosciences", " Multidisciplinary", "dryland vegetation change", "Environmental Sciences", "0105 earth and related environmental sciences"]}, "links": [{"href": "https://doi.org/10.1002/2014jg002635"}, {"rel": "related", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/Journal%20of%20Geophysical%20Research%3A%20Biogeosciences", "name": "related record", "description": "related record", "type": "application/json"}, {"rel": "self", "type": "application/geo+json", "title": "10.1002/2014jg002635", "name": "item", "description": "10.1002/2014jg002635", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main/items/10.1002/2014jg002635"}, {"rel": "collection", "type": "application/json", "title": "Collection", "name": "collection", "description": "Collection", "href": "https://repository.soilwise-he.eu/cat/collections/metadata:main"}], "time": {"date": "2014-12-01T00:00:00Z"}}, {"id": "10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110503", "type": "Feature", "geometry": null, "properties": {"updated": "2026-06-24T16:16:16Z", "type": "Journal Article", "created": "2025-03-18", "title": "Linking soil extracellular enzymes with soil respiration under altered litter inputs", "description": "Climate and land-use changes have altered both litter quality and quantity, with cascading impacts on soil respiration (SR). Soil extracellular enzymes (EEs) like cellulase and ligninase are crucial for deconstructing plant litter because they convert polymers into monomers. However, whether and how changes in litter inputs influence soil cellulase and ligninase activities as well as the implications for SR remain poorly understood. We conducted a global meta-analysis of 827 observations on the responses of SR and soil cellulase and ligninase activities to litter addition and litter removal. Litter addition significantly increased cellulase activity by 25 %, whereas litter removal decreased it by 26 %. Neither litter addition nor litter removal affected ligninase activity. Changes in cellulase activity correlated positively with SR under both litter addition and litter removal, but no such relationship was found for ligninase activity. These results indicate that changes in litter inputs affect SR primarily by affecting the microbial decomposition of readily decomposable rather than more structurally complex carbon pools. In addition, the effects of changes in litter inputs on cellulase activity decreased with treatment duration, suggesting that the long-term effects of changes in litter inputs on SR might be smaller than previously thought. Our results underscore the dominant role of cellulase in mediating the responses of SR to altered litter inputs. Integrating cellulase responses to altered litter inputs into Earth system models could improve the representation of microbial processes and refine the predictions of soil carbon dynamics.
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