Human activities are placing increasing pressure on soils through various stressors such as climate change, chemical pollution, and the presence of microplastics. These stressors typically do not occur in isolation but instead act together, and past research has shown that the more stressors present simultaneously, the greater the negative impact on soil properties and functions.
This study builds on that idea and investigates whether not only the number but also the type and diversity of stressors—referred to as their “dissimilarity”—play a key role in shaping soil responses. The researchers used a set of 12 different stressors and measured how each one individually affected soil properties and ecosystem functions like decomposition and enzyme activity. They then created random combinations of these stressors and calculated how different the stressors were from one another based on their individual effects.
The results showed that both a higher number of stressors and greater dissimilarity among them led to more significant deviations from expected outcomes. In particular, more dissimilar combinations tended to produce stronger and more frequent synergistic effects, where the joint impact on soil functions was greater than the sum of individual effects.
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