Abstract:Alpine meadow in the Three-River Headwater Region on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is undergoing severe degradation. Artificial planting is an important way to restore degraded grasslands. This study compares the structure and function of soil nematode communities of alpine meadow grasslands at different restoration stages (artificial grassland planting for 1, 5 and 10 years) to test the effectiveness of grassland restoration from the view of belowground. Compared with the native vegetation plots, plant belowground biomass of the restored plots is significantly lower, and soil bulk density, pH, total phosphorus, total potassium and nitrate nitrogen are significantly higher. Nematode evenness index and Shannon Wiener index in the three restoration plots are significantly higher than those in native vegetation plots. In addition, with the increase of restoration years, nematode abundance index, metabolic footprint index and maturity index in restoration plots are increased. Correlation analysis results show that soil nematode abundance is significantly positively correlated with plant belowground biomass, soil organic matter, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, mineral nitrogen and available nitrogen (P<0.05), and significantly negatively correlated with soil pH, total potassium and bulk density (P<0.05). Although the artificial restoration measures of the degraded grassland in the Three-River Headwater Region have not fully restored the forage productivity to the state of native vegetation, soil biological structure and function have a trend of improvement, indicating the strong restoration potential for the degraded grassland ecosystem in this area.