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Ecology

Drivers of decoupling in drylands

Nature volume 502, pages 628–629 (2013)Cite this article

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A study reveals that increasing aridity alters the balance of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in dryland soils, providing insight into how global climate change will affect soil fertility and ecosystem services. See Letter p.672

In all terrestrial ecosystems, the cycling of chemical elements is driven by both biotic and abiotic processes, but the ways in which these factors affect cycling vary for different elements. This is in part because carbon and nitrogen inputs to ecosystems are driven largely by biological processes such as photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation, whereas phosphorus inputs are driven mostly by weathering of rocks. The different driving processes can result in these cycles showing decoupled responses to environmental influences1, as has been most convincingly demonstrated for long-term chronosequences (gradients of soils of different ages) in which the availability of phosphorus relative to nitrogen diminishes sharply over time2,3. On page 672 of this issue, Delgado-Baquerizo et al.4 provide compelling evidence for a similar type of decoupled response to increasing aridity for dryland ecosystems worldwide.

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Figure 1: Aridity causes elemental cycles to decouple.

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  1. David A. Wardle is in the Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901 83 Umeå, Sweden.,

    David A. Wardle

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  1. David A. Wardle
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Correspondence to David A. Wardle.

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Wardle, D. Drivers of decoupling in drylands. Nature 502, 628–629 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/502628a

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