Soil Microbiome Inoculation for Resilient and Multifunctional New Forests in Post-Agricultural Landscapes.

Afforestation is increasingly recognized as a critical strategy to restore ecosystems and enhance biodiversity on post-agricultural landscapes. However, agricultural legacies, such as altered soil structure, nutrient imbalances, and depleted microbial diversity, can slow down forest establishment or cause ecosystems to deviate from expected successional trajectories. In this opinion paper, we explore the potential of soil inoculations as a tool to overcome these challenges by introducing beneficial microbial communities that can accelerate ecosystem recovery and forest development.

Fungal community composition predicts forest carbon storage at a continental scale.

Forest soils harbor hyper-diverse microbial communities which fundamentally regulate carbon and nutrient cycling across the globe. Directly testing hypotheses on how microbiome diversity is linked to forest carbon storage has been difficult, due to a lack of paired data on microbiome diversity and in situ observations of forest carbon accumulation and storage. Here, we investigated the relationship between soil microbiomes and forest carbon across 238 forest inventory plots spanning 15 European countries.

Responses of soil fauna communities to the individual and combined effects of multiple global change factors.

Soil fauna plays a key role in regulating biogeochemical cycles, but how multiple global change factors (GCFs) may affect faunal communities remains poorly studied. We conducted a meta-analysis using 1154 observations to evaluate the individual and combined effects of elevated CO , nitrogen (N) addition, warming, increased rainfall and drought on soil fauna density and diversity. Here we show that, overall, individual and combined effects of GCFs had negligible effects on soil fauna density and diversity, except that density was negatively affected by drought (-27.

Forest tree growth is linked to mycorrhizal fungal composition and function across Europe.

Most trees form symbioses with ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) which influence access to growth-limiting soil resources. Mesocosm experiments repeatedly show that EMF species differentially affect plant development, yet whether these effects ripple up to influence the growth of entire forests remains unknown. Here we tested the effects of EMF composition and functional genes relative to variation in well-known drivers of tree growth by combining paired molecular EMF surveys with high-resolution forest inventory data across 15 European countries.

Climatic conditions, not above- and belowground resource availability and uptake capacity, mediate tree diversity effects on productivity and stability.

Tree species diversity promotes multiple ecosystem functions and services. However, little is known about how above- and belowground resource availability (light, nutrients, and water) and resource uptake capacity mediate tree species diversity effects on aboveground wood productivity and temporal stability of productivity in European forests and whether the effects differ between humid and arid regions. We used the data from six major European forest types along a latitudinal gradient to address those two questions.

Highly comparable metabarcoding results from MGI-Tech and Illumina sequencing platforms.

With the developments in DNA nanoball sequencing technologies and the emergence of new platforms, there is an increasing interest in their performance in comparison with the widely used sequencing-by-synthesis methods. Here, we test the consistency of metabarcoding results from DNBSEQ-G400RS (DNA nanoball sequencing platform by MGI-Tech) and NovaSeq 6000 (sequencing-by-synthesis platform by Illumina) platforms using technical replicates of DNA libraries that consist of COI gene amplicons from 120 soil DNA samples. By subjecting raw sequencing data from both platforms to a uniform bioinformatics processing, we found that the proportion of high-quality reads passing through the filtering steps was similar in both datasets.

Author Correction: Environment and host as large-scale controls of ectomycorrhizal fungi.

Change history: In the HTML version of this Article, author 'Filipa Cox' had no affiliation in the author list, although she was correctly associated with affiliation 3 in the PDF. In addition, the blue circles for 'oak' were missing from Extended Data Fig. 1.

The response of soil solution chemistry in European forests to decreasing acid deposition.

Acid deposition arising from sulphur (S) and nitrogen (N) emissions from fossil fuel combustion and agriculture has contributed to the acidification of terrestrial ecosystems in many regions globally. However, in Europe and North America, S deposition has greatly decreased in recent decades due to emissions controls. In this study, we assessed the response of soil solution chemistry in mineral horizons of European forests to these changes.

Continental mapping of forest ecosystem functions reveals a high but unrealised potential for forest multifunctionality.

Humans require multiple services from ecosystems, but it is largely unknown whether trade-offs between ecosystem functions prevent the realisation of high ecosystem multifunctionality across spatial scales. Here, we combined a comprehensive dataset (28 ecosystem functions measured on 209 forest plots) with a forest inventory dataset (105,316 plots) to extrapolate and map relationships between various ecosystem multifunctionality measures across Europe. These multifunctionality measures reflected different management objectives, related to timber production, climate regulation and biodiversity conservation/recreation.

Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning relations in European forests depend on environmental context.

The importance of biodiversity in supporting ecosystem functioning is generally well accepted. However, most evidence comes from small-scale studies, and scaling-up patterns of biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (B-EF) remains challenging, in part because the importance of environmental factors in shaping B-EF relations is poorly understood. Using a forest research platform in which 26 ecosystem functions were measured along gradients of tree species richness in six regions across Europe, we investigated the extent and the potential drivers of context dependency of B-EF relations.

Stability of buried carbon in deep-ploughed forest and cropland soils - implications for carbon stocks.

Accumulation of soil organic carbon (SOC) may play a key role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. In particular, subsoil provides a great potential for additional SOC storage due to the assumed higher stability of subsoil SOC. The fastest way in which SOC reaches the subsoil is via burial, e.

Tree species diversity affects decomposition through modified micro-environmental conditions across European forests.

Different tree species influence litter decomposition directly through species-specific litter traits, and indirectly through distinct modifications of the local decomposition environment. Whether these indirect effects on decomposition are influenced by tree species diversity is presently not clear. We addressed this question by studying the decomposition of two common substrates, cellulose paper and wood sticks, in a total of 209 forest stands of varying tree species diversity across six major forest types at the scale of Europe.

Sources of errors and uncertainties in the assessment of forest soil carbon stocks at different scales-review and recommendations.

Spatially explicit knowledge of recent and past soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in forests will improve our understanding of the effect of human- and non-human-induced changes on forest C fluxes. For SOC accounting, a minimum detectable difference must be defined in order to adequately determine temporal changes and spatial differences in SOC. This requires sufficiently detailed data to predict SOC stocks at appropriate scales within the required accuracy so that only significant changes are accounted for.

In vitro toxicity of cationic micelles and liposomes in cultured human hepatocyte (HepG2) and lung epithelial (A549) cell lines.

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of cationic micelle and liposome drug delivery systems on liver and lung cells in a toxicological in vitro screening model, with observations on cytotoxicity and genotoxicity. A screening battery was established for assessment of a broad range of parameters related to adverse effects. Clear concentration response effects were observed related to impairment of mitochondrial function, membrane integrity and oxidative stress markers, but no effect was observed on genotoxicity.

Jack-of-all-trades effects drive biodiversity-ecosystem multifunctionality relationships in European forests.

There is considerable evidence that biodiversity promotes multiple ecosystem functions (multifunctionality), thus ensuring the delivery of ecosystem services important for human well-being. However, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are poorly understood, especially in natural ecosystems. We develop a novel approach to partition biodiversity effects on multifunctionality into three mechanisms and apply this to European forest data.

Biotic homogenization can decrease landscape-scale forest multifunctionality.

Many experiments have shown that local biodiversity loss impairs the ability of ecosystems to maintain multiple ecosystem functions at high levels (multifunctionality). In contrast, the role of biodiversity in driving ecosystem multifunctionality at landscape scales remains unresolved. We used a comprehensive pan-European dataset, including 16 ecosystem functions measured in 209 forest plots across six European countries, and performed simulations to investigate how local plot-scale richness of tree species (α-diversity) and their turnover between plots (β-diversity) are related to landscape-scale multifunctionality.

Does species richness affect fine root biomass and production in young forest plantations?

Tree species diversity has been reported to increase forest ecosystem above-ground biomass and productivity, but little is known about below-ground biomass and production in diverse mixed forests compared to single-species forests. For testing whether species richness increases below-ground biomass and production and thus complementarity between forest tree species in young stands, we determined fine root biomass and production of trees and ground vegetation in two experimental plantations representing gradients in tree species richness. Additionally, we measured tree fine root length and determined species composition from fine root biomass samples with the near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy method.

Influences of evergreen gymnosperm and deciduous angiosperm tree species on the functioning of temperate and boreal forests.

It has been recognized for a long time that the overstorey composition of a forest partly determines its biological and physical-chemical functioning. Here, we review evidence of the influence of evergreen gymnosperm (EG) tree species and deciduous angiosperm (DA) tree species on the water balance, physical-chemical soil properties and biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nutrients. We used scientific publications based on experimental designs where all species grew on the same parent material and initial soil, and were similar in stage of stand development, former land use and current management.

Afforestation effects on SOC in former cropland: oak and spruce chronosequences resampled after 13 years.

Chronosequences are commonly used to assess soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration after land-use change, but SOC dynamics predicted by this space-for-time substitution approach have rarely been validated by resampling. We conducted a combined chronosequence/resampling study in a former cropland area (Vestskoven) afforested with oak (Quercus robur) and Norway spruce (Picea abies) over the past 40 years. The aims of this study were (i) to compare present and previous chronosequence trends in forest floor and top mineral soil (0-25 cm) C stocks; (ii) to compare chronosequence estimates with current rates of C stock change based on resampling at the stand level; (iii) to estimate SOC changes in the subsoil (25-50 cm); and (iv) to assess the influence of two tree species on SOC dynamics.

Soil carbon stock change following afforestation in Northern Europe: a meta-analysis.

Northern Europe supports large soil organic carbon (SOC) pools and has been subjected to high frequency of land-use changes during the past decades. However, this region has not been well represented in previous large-scale syntheses of land-use change effects on SOC, especially regarding effects of afforestation. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis of SOC stock change following afforestation in Northern Europe.

Plant movements and climate warming: intraspecific variation in growth responses to nonlocal soils.

Most range shift predictions focus on the dispersal phase of the colonization process. Because moving populations experience increasingly dissimilar nonclimatic environmental conditions as they track climate warming, it is also critical to test how individuals originating from contrasting thermal environments can establish in nonlocal sites. We assess the intraspecific variation in growth responses to nonlocal soils by planting a widespread grass of deciduous forests (Milium effusum) into an experimental common garden using combinations of seeds and soil sampled in 22 sites across its distributional range, and reflecting movement scenarios of up to 1600 km.