The tundra is warming more rapidly than any other biome on Earth, and the potential ramifications are far-reaching because of global feedback effects between vegetation and climate. A better understanding of how environmental factors shape plant structure and function is crucial for predicting the consequences of environmental change for ecosystem functioning. Here we explore the biome-wide relationships between temperature, moisture and seven key plant functional traits both across space and over three decades of warming at 117 tundra locations. Spatial temperature–trait relationships were generally strong but soil moisture had a marked influence on the strength and direction of these relationships, highlighting the potentially important influence of changes in water availability on future trait shifts in tundra plant communities. Community height increased with warming across all sites over the past three decades, but other traits lagged far behind predicted rates of change. Our findings highlight the challenge of using space-for-time substitution to predict the functional consequences of future warming and suggest that functions that are tied closely to plant height will experience the most rapid change. They also reveal the strength with which environmental factors shape biotic communities at the coldest extremes of the planet and will help to improve projections of functional changes in tundra ecosystems with climate warming.

Global change impacts on biogeochemical cycles have been widely studied, but our understanding of whether the responses of plant elemental composition to global change drivers differ between above‐ and belowground plant organs remains incomplete. We conducted a meta‐analysis of 201 reports including 1,687 observations of studies that have analyzed simultaneously N and P concentrations changes in leaves and roots in the same plants in response to drought, elevated [CO₂], and N and P fertilization around the world, and contrasted the results within those obtained with a general database (838 reports and 14,772 observations) that analyzed the changes in N and P concentrations in leaves and/or roots of plants submitted to the commented global change drivers. At global level, elevated [CO₂] decreased N concentrations in leaves and roots and decreased N:P ratio in roots but no in leaves, but was not related to P concentration changes. However, the response differed among vegetation types. In temperate forests, elevated [CO₂] was related with lower N concentrations in leaves but not in roots, whereas in crops, the contrary patterns were observed. Elevated [CO₂] decreased N concentrations in leaves and roots in tundra plants, whereas not clear relationships were observed in temperate grasslands. However, when elevated [CO₂] and N fertilization coincided, leaves had lower N concentrations, whereas root had higher N concentrations suggesting that more nutrients will be allocated to roots to improve uptake of the soil resources not directly provided by the global change drivers. N fertilization and drought increased foliar and root N concentrations while the effects on P concentrations were less clear. The changes in N and P allocation to leaves and root, especially those occurring in opposite direction between them have the capacity to differentially affect above‐ and belowground ecosystem functions, such as litter mineralization and above‐ and belowground food webs.

The increase in aridity, mainly by decreases in precipitation but also by higher temperatures, is likely the main threat to the diversity and survival of Mediterranean forests. Changes in land use, including the abandonment of extensive crop activities, mainly in mountains and remote areas, and the increases in human settlements and demand for more resources with the resulting fragmentation of the landscape, hinder the establishment of appropriate management tools to protect Mediterranean forests and their provision of services and biodiversity. Experiments and observations indicate that if changes in climate, land use and other components of global change, such as pollution and overexploitation of resources, continue, the resilience of many forests will likely be exceeded, altering their structure and function and changing, mostly decreasing, their capacity to continue to provide their current services. A consistent assessment of the impacts of the changes, however, remains elusive due to the difficulty of obtaining simultaneous and complete data for all scales of the impacts in the same forests, areas and regions. We review the impacts of climate change and other components of global change and their interactions on the terrestrial forests of Mediterranean regions, with special attention to their impacts on ecosystem services. Management tools for counteracting the negative effects of global change on Mediterranean ecosystem- services are finally discussed.