BACKGROUND Both climate warming and atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition are predicted to affect soil N cycling in terrestrial biomes over the next century. However, the interactive effects of warming and N deposition on soil N mineralization in temperate grasslands are poorly understood. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A field manipulation experiment was conducted to examine the effects of war...

Global environmental changes affect not only the aboveground but also the belowground components of ecosystems. The effects of seasonal drought and air warming on the genus level richness of Collembola, and on the abundance and biomass of the community of Collembola and mites were studied in an acidic and a calcareous forest soil in a model oak-ecosystem experiment (the Querco experiment) at th...

The effects of climate change on soil organic matter-its structure, microbial community, carbon storage, and respiration response-remain uncertain and widely debated. In addition, the effects of climate changes on ecosystem structure and function are often modulated or delayed, meaning that short-term experiments are not sufficient to characterize ecosystem responses. This study capitalized on ...

Climate change may affect the ability of soil-based onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS) to treat wastewater in coastal regions of the Northeastern United States. Higher temperatures and water tables can affect treatment by reducing the volume of unsaturated soil and oxygen available for treatment, which may result in greater transport of pathogens, nutrients, and biochemical oxygen deman...

Long-term carbon (C) cycle feedbacks to climate depend on the future dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC). Current models show low predictive accuracy at simulating contemporary SOC pools, which can be improved through parameter estimation. However, major uncertainty remains in global soil responses to climate change, particularly uncertainty in how the activity of soil microbial communities w...

The soil surface layer is a critical boundary between land and atmosphere, and soil moisture is a critical condition affecting interaction of land surface and atmosphere. The root zone can be defined as the top 100 cm of the soil layer. Remotely sensed data can indirectly measure soil moisture, but the signal only penetrates the top few centimeters, so soil moisture at deeper layers must be est...

Droughts can severely reduce the productivity of agricultural lands and forests. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Southeast Regional Climate Hub (SERCH) has launched the Lately Identified Geospecific Heightened Threat System (LIGHTS) to inform its users of potential water deficiency threats. The system identifies droughts and other climate anomalies such as extreme precipitati...

Simulation models can be valuable to investigate potential effects of climate change on greenhouse gas emissions from terrestrial ecosystems. DNDC (the DeNitrificationDeComposition model) was tested against observed soil respiration data from adjacent pasture and arable fields in the Irish midlands. The arable field was converted from grassland approximately 50 years ago and managed since 2003 ...

Hydrological modeling of the unsaturated soil zone fluxes allows the transfer processes simulation through the hydrological active soil zone. The pedotransfer functions (FTP) are useful tools in the modeling process. They contain analytical functions derived through statistic optimization process using a large amount of soil information data. This paper aims to analyze the level of reliability ...

Decreasing temperature and increasing precipitation along altitude gradients are typical mountain climate in subtropical China. In such a climate regime, identifying the patterns of the C stable isotope composition (δ(13)C) in plants and soils and their relations to the context of climate change is essential. In this study, the patterns of δ(13)C variation were investigated for tree leaves, lit...