Phosphorus-driven shifts in nutrient-use strategies across China’s plantation forests

As plantation forests expand globally, particularly in China, clarifying how stand development under chronic nitrogen (N) enrichment reorganizes nutrient-use strategies is central to predicting ecosystem functioning. The prevailing view holds that phosphorus (P) limitation intensifies with stand age, driving a shift from acquisitive to conservative nutrient-use strategies, yet this paradigm has rarely been tested by long-term data. Here, combining a 15-yr N addition experiment in a larch plantation chronosequence within the world’s largest contiguous plantation forest, and a co-located short-term seedling P-addition experiment, with a synthesis of 926 observations spanning multiple plantation species across China, we found P limitation weakens with stand age, coupled with coordinated shifts in nutrient-use strategies—from conservative to acquisitive aboveground, and from self-reliance to symbiotic acquisition belowground. Chronic N addition exacerbates P limitation, with young trees enhancing leaf nucleic and lipid P resorption, whereas mature trees reallocate leaf P fractions. We demonstrate that the alleviation of P limitation with stand age underlies coordinated shifts in above–belowground nutrient strategies, highlighting the importance of age-tailored management to sustain long-term forest productivity and resilience in a changing world.