Fine root turnover is an essential process controlling the uptake, conservation, and loss of nutrients, water, and carbon between plants and soils. As such, it is at the core of the recent but already well-known and hotly debated root economics space (RES) theory.

Here, gathering an unprecedented dataset, we suggest that the current interpretation of the global RES axes needs to be partly reconsidered to account for the potential roles of the two axes in defining the fast–slow continuum in root strategies.

We also demonstrate that there are major differences between plant above and belowground strategies for the longevity of leaf vs. root organs. Overall, our work provides a synthesis of root lifespan and its environmental and plant-related drivers.