Dataset for "Human activities have greater impacts than climate change on soil multifunctionality in arid regions of China"

Climate change and human activities greatly influence soil multifunctionality (SMF) in the arid regions of China. While substantial research exists on how climate change affects SMF in these areas, the influence of human activities and their driving factors on SMF remains less understood. Here, we evaluated the influence of both climate change and human activities on five soil functions across 18,189 observations from 841 studies in China's arid regions and employed machine learning methods to forecast future changes. Our findings reveal that warming and precipitation changes had negligible effects on SMF, whereas nitrogen deposition significantly enhanced SMF. Compared to climate change, human activities, particularly fencing for vegetation restoration and the Grain for Green Program had a more pronounced effect on SMF. Moreover, local climate conditions were key drivers of the response of SMF to climate change, whereas experimental duration was the main factor influencing the response of SMF to human activities. Future projections suggested that well-planned human interventions might continue to enhance SMF, especially in hyper-arid regions. Our findings highlight that human activities exert a more significant influence on SMF than climate change in China's arid regions and provide evidence for the sustainable management and ecological restoration of arid ecosystems.