Abstract: In the context of global changes, shrub encroachment and climatic warming exert significant impacts on multiple soil functions and their heterogeneity of grassland ecosystems. However, the effects of shrub encroachment and warming on the β-soil multifunctionality on alpine meadows remain unknown. We conducted a three-year experiment on alpine meadows dominated by Kobresia and Carex species, involving the removal of shrubs (only one shrub species, Dasiphora fruticosa, was present in the plots) and the installation of open-top growth chambers for warming (by 0.5-1.2 ℃). We used multidimensional Euclidean distance to assess spatial variations in soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, nitrate, ammonium, total phosphorus, phosphatase, urease, sucrase, soil bacterial copy number, and soil fungal copy number to obtain β-soil multifunctionality and analyzed the effects of shrub encroachment and warming on β-soil multifunctionality of alpine meadows. The results showed that removing shrub significantly reduced β-soil multifunctionality by 7.3%, while warming did not affect β-soil multifunctionality. The interaction between removing shrub and warming had a significant effect on β-soil multifunctionality. Under non-warming condition, removing shrub significantly reduced β-soil multifunctionality by 14.3%. However, under the warming treatment, removing shrub did not affect β-soil multifunctionality. Structural equation modeling indicated that removing shrub and the interaction between removing shrub and warming primarily affected β-soil multifunctionality through the direct pathways. Shrub encroachment can increase the spatial variation in ecosystem functions on alpine meadow of the Tibetan Plateau. In the context of global climatic warming, intensified shrub encroachment may lead to the homogenization of ecosystem functions.

Key words: β-soil multifunctionality, β-soil microbial diversity, shrub, soil environmental heterogeneity, warming