RESEARCH ARTICLE Experimental and observational studies find contrasting responses of soil nutrients to climate change ZY Yuan1,2*†, F Jiao1,2*†, XR Shi1,2, Jordi Sardans3,4, Fernando T Maestre5, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo5,6, Peter B Reich7,8, Josep Pen˜ uelas3,4 1State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China; 2Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Science and Ministry of Water Resource, Yangling, China; 3Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC- UAB, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientı´ficas (CSIC), Bellaterra, Spain; 4CREAF, Cerdanyola del Valle`s, Spain; 5Departamento de Biologı´a y Geologı´a, Fı´sica y Quı´mica Inorga´nica, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Mo´stoles, Spain; 6Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado; 7Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, Australia; 8Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, United States Abstract Manipulative experiments and observations along environmental gradients, the two most common approaches to evaluate the impacts of climate change on nutrient cycling, are generally assumed to produce similar results, but this assumption has rarely been tested. We did *For correspondence: zyyuan@ so by conducting a meta-analysis and found that soil nutrients responded differentially to drivers of ms.iswc.ac.cn (ZYY);
[email protected]. climate change depending on the approach considered. Soil carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus ac.cn (FJ) concentrations generally decreased with water addition in manipulative experiments but increased †These authors contributed with annual precipitation along environmental gradients.