In recent years, overgrazing and an increasingly warm and dry climate have resulted in significant degradation of the alpine grasslands in the source region of the Yellow River, which has seriously harmed both the sustainable development of local animal husbandry and the environment. After degradation, the interaction between vegetation productivity, species diversity, and soil nutrients can aggravate the degradation of alpine grasslands. Most previous studies have focused on community productivity, species diversity, and their relationships after degradation; however, the change in soil elements in the process of degradation is often neglected. Exploring the relationship between vegetation community productivity, species diversity, and soil nutrients has important practical significance to understand the degradation process of alpine grasslands and their restoration. In this study, the method of spatial distribution or temporal succession was used in the source region of the Yellow River. Five degraded gradients from intact to very severely degraded alpine steppes were selected based on the vegetation cover and the dominant species to explore the relationship between vegetation community productivity, species diversity, and soil nutrients. Our results showed: 1) with the aggravation of the degradation degree, the aboveground and belowground biomasses of the community showed a non-significant trend towards a decrease, reaching the maximum in the slightly degraded stage, and was significantly reduced in the severely and very severely degraded stages; 2) the Shannon-Wiener diversity index increased by 20% and 15% in the slightly and moderately degraded stage, respectively (P=0.025 and P=0.039, respectively); the evenness index showed a no-significant change from the intact to severely degraded stage, and the species diversity index decreased significantly in the very severely degraded stage; 3) soil moisture, organic carbon, total nitrogen, ammonium nitrogen, and nitrate nitrogen at first showed a trend towards non-significant change and then decreased, and soil bulk density increased significantly with the aggravation of degradation; 4) community biomass and species diversity were positively correlated to soil nutrient levels and was negatively correlated to the soil bulk density; redundancy analysis results showed that soil bulk density, nitrate nitrogen, and organic carbon were the main soil factors driving changes in vegetation factors during degradation. Therefore, different restoration and management measures should be adopted for different degradation stages, especially to improve soil nutrients and physical properties in the severely degraded and very severely degraded stages. At the same time, more attention should be paid to the two key stages of moderate and severe degradation.