WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS
In the long-running TeRaCON experiment, researchers manipulated elevated CO₂, nitrogen enrichment, warming and reduced rainfall in all combinations for 13 years. Single drivers changed the temporal stability of aboveground productivity through different pathways, while combined effects frequently departed from additive expectations and sometimes changed direction through time. Across treatments, species asynchrony was the dominant correlate of stability, with soil moisture and functional composition contributing secondarily.
WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ
The practical warning is methodological as much as ecological: responses measured one driver at a time, or over only a few years, can misrepresent how real ecosystems behave under simultaneous pressures. Stability emerges from interactions among resources, traits and community dynamics—not from a simple sum of stressors.
CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY
This is one long-term temperate grassland experiment, and the stability metric is temporal mean productivity divided by its variability; a treatment that increases this metric is not necessarily healthier or more biodiverse. Results should not be generalized unchanged to forests, wetlands or other systems.
SOURCE
Nature Ecology & Evolution · Original evidence
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