Global response of soil biodiversity to climate and land use changes

Soil biodiversity (SB) is experiencing significant changes worldwide, yet its responses to climate and land use changes remain unclear. In light of this, we combined multiple environmental factors to construct a global SB dataset with a spatial resolution of 0.25° × 0.25° from 2000 to 2019. We determined that the global mean SB value was 0.66 during 2000–2019, and it slowly increased at a rate of 6.24 × 10−4/yr. The highest SB value (1.20) occurred within the Amazon Plain. Among the climate factors, temperature (T) was found to be responsible for the majority of the SB changes, accounting for approximately 40% of them. Compared to the results of other studies, our findings indicated that the SB increased across all types of land use and that urbanization had a positive impact on the increase in the SB. However, the most significant increase occurred in the pasture/range land. Precipitation (P) had similar effects on the SB in the pasture/range land and unmanaged grass/shrubland, while the areas with sparse or no vegetation experienced significant variations in temperature. These findings provide additional insights into the global pattern of SB and highlight the role of climate and land use changes in driving global and regional changes in SB.