Stability of belowground productivity buffers global change in grasslands: evidence from a meta-analysis

Grassland ecosystems, central to global carbon pool and resilience, face intensifying anthropogenic pressures. Yet a fundamental question remains unresolved: Are aboveground and belowground communities equally capable of buffering disturbances under global change? By synthesizing 1,513 experimental observations from 113 studies spanning 85 grasslands worldwide, we quantify the responses of productivity, temporal stability, and carbon partitioning to nine critical drivers—nutrient enrichment, precipitation shifts, elevated CO₂, warming, grazing, and others. Our analysis reveals a critical divergence: while aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and belowground net primary productivity (BNPP) shifts remain coupled (r = 0.38, p