BACKGROUND Mowing is a widely adopted management practice for the semiarid steppe in China and affects CH(4) exchange. However, the magnitude and the underlying mechanisms for CH(4) uptake in response to mowing remain uncertain. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In two consecutive growing seasons, we measured the effect of mowing on CH(4) uptake in a steppe community. Vegetation was mowed to 2 c...

Remote sensing indices of burn area and fire severity have been developed and tested for forest ecosystems, but not sparsely vegetated, desert shrub-steppe in which large wildfires are a common occurrence and a major issue for land management. We compared the performance of remote sensing indices for detecting burn area and fire severity with extensive ground-based cover assessments made before...

The Tibetan Plateau, known as the “world’s third pole” for its extremely harsh and fragile ecological environment, has attracted great attention because of its sensitivity to global changes. Alpine grassland on the Tibetan Plateau has an important function in the global carbon cycle. Many studies have examined the effects of various environmental factors on biomass distribution. In this study, ...

Cand Ku-band scatterometer backscatter time series are analysed and compared to meteorological data for two biomes, the African Steppe and the Scandinavian Boreal Forest. Observed characteristics of large scale scattering are inferred and discussed.

In contrast to the modern Arctic, high-latitude ecosystems of Late Pleistocene supported a diverse range large mammalian herbivores, including abundant bison (Bison priscus) and horses (Equus sp.). This ‘mammoth steppe’ biome has no extant analog tundra vegetation is likely incapable supporting such high density mammals. Compared Arctic ecosystems, higher diversity biomass mammal populations ma...

The two living species of bison (European and American) are among the few terrestrial megafauna to have survived the late Pleistocene extinctions. Despite the extensive bovid fossil record in Eurasia, the evolutionary history of the European bison (or wisent, Bison bonasus) before the Holocene (<11.7 thousand years ago (kya)) remains a mystery. We use complete ancient mitochondrial genomes and ...

Warming is expected to intensify hydrological processes and reshape precipitation regimes, which closely related water availability for terrestrial ecosystems. Effects of the inter-annual changes on plant growth are widely concerned. However, it not well-known how responds intra-annual regime changes. Here, we compiled reanalysis climate data (ERA5) four satellite-based vegetation indices, incl...

Semi-steppe rangelands are a complex, highly dynamic and often multi-layered mosaic of grassland, shrubland, and intermediate communities. A few recent studies have explicitly or implicitly developed synthetic hypotheses about how interactive effects of human made disturbances initiate dynamic changes in plant community composition to cause a shifting mosaic of vegetation pattern across the lan...

Semi-steppe rangelands are a complex, highly dynamic and often multi-layered mosaic of grassland, shrubland, and intermediate communities. A few recent studies have explicitly or implicitly developed synthetic hypotheses about how interactive effects of human made disturbances initiate dynamic changes in plant community composition to cause a shifting mosaic of vegetation pattern across the lan...

Grasshoppers can greatly interfere with agriculture and husbandry, they will breed grow rapidly in suitable habitats. Therefore, it is necessary to extract the distribution of grasshopper potential habitat (GPH), analyze spatial-temporal characteristics GPH, detect different effects key environmental factors meadow typical steppe. To achieve goal, this study took two steppe types Xilingol (the ...