Mantel tests and Spearman correlation analyses implied that edaphic factors also affected soil fungal community structure. Drainage altered both the fungal community structure and some edaphic factors. Saprotrophic fungi predominated in both FW and DFW. Ascomycota, Sordariomycetes, and Cephalothecaceae were the dominant fungal phylum, class, and family, respectively, in 0–5 and 5–10 cm soils of both FW and DFW, representing as high as 76.17, 58.22, and 45.21% of the fungal community in 5–10 FW soils, respectively. Significantly higher values of ACE and Chao1 in 5–10 cm soils in FW than in DFW indicated that wetland drainage may reduce fungal community richness in 5–10 cm soils. No significant differences in the α diversity of the soil fungal community were found in 0–10 cm soils between FW and DFW (p > 0.05), except for the abundance-based coverage estimator (ACE) and Chao1 indices in 5–10 cm soils. Soil samples were collected at depths of 0–5 and 5–10 cm in freshwater Phragmites australis wetlands to investigate changes in the fungal community before and after drainage (termed FW and DFW, respectively) using high-throughput sequencing of the fungal-specific internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) gene region. The effects of wetland drainage on the soil fungal community remain to be clarified. Wetland drainage has been intensively implemented globally, and it has exerted significant effects on wetland ecosystems. Therefore, this article reviews the impact of climate change-induced alterations in peatland vegetation phenology and composition on future climate and the uncertainties that need to be addressed for more accurate climate prediction. The alterations in vegetation cause changes in the carbon assimilation and release of greenhouse gases.

Peat mosses are becoming less abundant, vascular plants cover is increasing, and the vegetation season and phenophases of vascular plants start sooner. Warmer climate and changes in precipitation patterns cause changes in the composition and phenology of peatland vegetation. They are mostly distributed in high latitudes, where the temperature rises faster than in the other parts of the planet. Peatlands belong to one of the largest carbon stores on the Earth. Model-based predictions of future climate are becoming more complex and precise, but they still lack crucial information about the reaction of some important ecosystems, such as peatlands. Global climate is changing faster than humankind has ever experienced. Our results represent a major advance in understanding the non-linear nature of ecosystem properties to drought and pave the way towards a truly mechanistic understanding of the effects of drought on ecosystem processes. We show that functional transitions in ecosystem respiration critically depends on the degree of response of graminoids and saprotrophic fungi to drought. In turn, increasing enzyme activities promoted ecosystem respiration. Graminoids indirectly influenced fungal functional composition and soil enzyme activities through their direct effect on dissolved organic matter quality, while saprotrophic fungi directly influenced soil enzyme activities. As a corollary, ecosystem respiration was the greatest when graminoids and saprotrophic fungi became prevalent as a response to the extreme drought. Using moving window structural equation models, we show that substantial changes in ecosystem respiration, plant and soil fungal communities occurred when the water level fell below a tipping point of -24 cm. Here, we investigated the response of plant and soil fungi to drought of different intensities using a water table gradient in peatlands – a major C sink ecosystem. The conundrum is what causes ecosystems to shift in response to drought. However, recent studies underlined the strong variability in ecosystem's response to droughts, raising the issue of non-linear responses in plant and soil communities. Ecosystems are increasingly prone to climate extremes, such as drought, with long lasting effects on both plant and soil communities and, subsequently, on carbon (C) cycling.

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