Critical transition of multifunctional stability induced by nitrogen enrichment in grasslands differing in degradation severity

Nitrogen (N) enrichment poses a severe threat to ecosystem multifunctionality. Given increasing variability of ecosystem functioning and uncertainty under global change, a pressing question is how N enrichment affects temporal stability of multiple functions (i.e., 'multifunctional stability'). Whether the responses of multifunctional stability to N enrichment change with external disturbance, such as grasslands with different degradation statuses, remains unclear. We conducted multi-level N enrichment experiments at four grassland sites with no, moderate, severe, and extreme degradation statuses in Inner Mongolia, China. We measured temporal stability of five functions, comprising aboveground net primary productivity, soil total carbon (C) and N storage, and soil microbial biomass C and N storage, to explore how multifunctional stability responded to N enrichment. The temporal stability of most individual functions and multifunctional stability decreased sharply when N input exceeded 20 g N m-2 y-1 in the non-, moderately, and severely degraded grasslands, whereas the threshold declined to 10 g N m-2 y-1 in the extremely degraded grassland. The relative importance of plant and soil microbes in regulating multifunctional stability varied along the degradation gradient. In particular, plant species asynchrony and species richness showed strong positive relationships with multifunctional stability in the non- and moderately degraded grasslands, whereas soil microbial diversity, especially bacterial diversity, was positively associated with multifunctional stability in the severely and extremely degraded grasslands. Overall, our findings identified a critical threshold for N-induced multifunctional stability and called for context-specific biodiversity conservation strategies to buffer the negative effect of N enrichment on grassland ecosystem stability.