Abstract: The effects of global change on the living environment of humans have become a focus of great concern of the whole world. Grassland, widespread on the earth and generally located in ecologically fragile zones, is very sensitive to global change. Researches on the impacts of environmental changes on grassland ecosystems mainly focus on grassland vegetation at ground level; little is known about how the microbial diversity of grassland soils responds to global change. This paper presents a review on the effects of global change, including elevated CO₂, warming, precipitation regimes, and increased nitrogen deposition, on the structure and diversity of soil microbial community in grassland. In conclusions, the authors suggest that the future work on the responses of grassland soil microbial communities to global change needs to emphasize on: (1) multi-factor synthetic experiments; (2) combination of short-term and long-term studies; (3) relationship between soil microbial diversity and grassland vegetation in the background of global change; (4) integrated studies on soil microbial communities and biogeochemical cycles in ecosystems.

Key words: CO₂ enrichment, diversity of microbial community, global change, grassland, nitrogen deposition, precipitation regime, warming