Vegetation restoration plays a crucial role in conserving soil and water, as well as rehabilitating ecosystems, by enhancing soil properties and vegetation attributes. The evaluation of the ecological consequences among different vegetation restoration types can be achieved by clarifying the impacts on carbon, water and nutrient storages. In this study, we selected four typical vegetation restoration types (Pinus tabuliformis forest (PTF), Platycladus orientalis forest (POF) and Robinia pseudoacacia forest (RPF) as typical planted forests, and the natural secondary forest (NSF) as the control treatment) in the eastern Loess Plateau of China. The soil properties (at 0–200 cm depth) and vegetation attributes (including arborous, shrubs and herbaceous plants) were measured, as well as calculated soil carbon, water and nutrient storages, with a total of 1600 soil samples and 180 vegetation survey plots. The partial redundancy analysis (pRDA) and correlation analysis were also used to analyze the contributions and relationships among environmental factors, soil eco-hydrology and nutrient supplement services in different forestry ecosystems. The results indicate the following: (1) NSF has the lowest soil bulk density (1.21 ± 0.184 g·cm⁻³). Soil properties varied significantly at vertical scales, and had obvious surface accumulation. (2) Soil moisture storages were better in natural forests than those in planted forests, with more drastic changes in soil moisture dynamics. (3) The soil carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus storages significantly differed among four vegetation types, with the highest carbon storages in PTF (207.75 ± 0.674 t·ha⁻¹), the highest nitrogen storages in POF (5.54 t·ha⁻¹), and the highest phosphorus storages in RPF (4.33 t·ha⁻¹), respectively. (4) Soil carbon storages depend primarily on the coupling effect of soil properties and precipitation, while nutrient storage is mainly influenced by soil properties. The results quantify the significant differences in soil water, carbon, and nutrient storage across various vegetation restoration types, and reveal the individual and combined contributions of environmental factors, providing new insights into the mechanisms driving these differences. These findings offer practical guidance for the sustainable management of forest ecosystems and the optimization of ecological restoration strategies on the Loess Plateau.

Large-scale vegetation restoration has been performed to improve the fragile ecological environment of the Loess Plateau in the last decades. At present, the effects and mechanism of long-term vegetation restoration on soil properties in ecosystems require further exploration to provide a reference for rational ecological construction. Hence, we investigated the differences in vegetation attributes and soil properties between three typical vegetation types (Pinus tabulaeformis plantation forest, PTPF; Robinia pseudoacacia plantation forest, RPPF; natural secondary forest, NSF) after long-term (30–40 years) vegetation restoration in the western Loess Region, China. Our results showed that (1) the arborous synusia biomass of the plantation forests was twice that of NSF, whereas NSF had almost 50% higher near-surface synusia biomass than the plantation forests; (2) the soil nutrient contents of the plantation forests were lower (30%) than those of NSF; (3) the soil bulk density, organic matter, total nitrogen, and phosphorus were positively related to arborous and shrub synusia biomass; (4) the coupling effects of four biological synusiae (with the contribution of 47.67%) were the dominant factors affecting soil physicochemical properties. Natural forests have the better vegetation attributes and soil properties than plantation forests, indicating that the close-to-nature restoration should be considered in ecological restoration. These findings can provide scientific support and theoretical basis for reforestation and ecological restoration in the Loess Plateau region and similar areas in the future.