Highlights

• Pollution causes the largest negative impact on soil fauna communities

• Land use intensification and climate change also negatively impacted communities

• GC impacts rarely varied with body size, and taxa groups often responded similarly

• Long-term stressors had no greater impact on soil biodiversity than short-term ones

Unexpectedly, pollution caused the largest negative impact on soil biodiversity - particularly worrying due to continually increasing levels of pollution and poor mechanistic understanding of impacts relative to other GCs.

Not all GCs and stressors were detrimental; organic-based nutrient enrichment often resulted in positive responses.

Including soil biodiversity in large-scale analyses is vital to fully understand the impact of GCs across the different realms.