Research in low biodiversity extreme environments allows separation of the climatic, soil and biological interactions that determine soil biodiversity and community structure. Studies focused on the response of low diversity communities in soils of the Antarctic Dry Valleys and the Chihuahuan Desert of the southwestern USA, to manipulations of soil resources and climate, offer the best opportun...

Quantifying impacts of ecological disturbance on ecosystem carbon and water fluxes will improve predictive understanding of biosphere—atmosphere feedbacks. Tree mortality caused by mountain pine bark beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is hypothesized to decrease photosynthesis and water flux to the atmosphere while increasing respiration at a rate proportional to mortality. This work uses data f...

Although understanding of nitrogen cycling and nitrification in forest ecosystems has improved greatly over the past several decades, our ability to characterize spatial patterns is still quite limited. A number of studies have shown linkages between canopy chemistry and N cycling, but few have considered the degree to which these trends can provide an indicator of forest N status across large,...

Seed banks are critically important for disturbance specialist plants because seeds of these species germinate only in disturbed soil. Disturbance and seed depth affect the survival and germination probability of seeds in the seed bank, which in turn affect population dynamics. We develop a density-dependent stochastic integral projection model to evaluate the effect of stochastic soil disturba...

Ecosystem responses to climate changes will affect the exchange of carbon (C) with the atmosphere, thus providing feedback for future climate response. We have developed a C budget model of Canadian forests and forest sector activities and used sensitivity analysis runs with changes in productivity, decomposition, and disturbance regimes to assess the sensitivity of the Canadian forest sector C...

Stand dynamics and the gap initiation prior to gap formation are not well-understood because of its long-term nature and the scarcity of late-successional stands. Reconstruction of such disturbance is normally based on historical records and dendroecological methods. We investigated gap initiation and formation at the fine-scale stand level in the old-growth reserve of Karlshaugen in Norway. Gi...

Forest management often results in changes in soil microbial communities. To understand how forest management can change microbial communities, we studied soil microbial abundance and community structure in a natural Chamaecyparis (NCP) forest, a disturbed Chamaecyparis (DCP) forest, a secondary (regenerated) Chamaecyparis (SCP) forest and a secondary (reforested) Cryptomeria (SCD) forest. We a...

Urbanization may cause increased exposure levels to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and associated health risks for over half of the world’s population living in cities, but little evidence has shown a direct spatial relationship between urbanization and soil PAH pollution. Based on the monitored PAH concentrations in 188 topsoil (0–5 cm) samples in Shenzhen, the most rapidly developing...

Agricultural productivity levels depend on the adoption of (improved) agricultural technologies, among other aspects. However, the use of improved technologies in Mozambique is still very limited. Data from the National Agricultural Survey of 2012, known as Inquérito Agrícola Integrado, show that less than 3% of smallholder farmers used inorganic fertilizers, 6% used pesticides, 9% used improve...

Some species of centipedes and millipedes inhabit upper soil layers exclusively and are not recorded by pitfall trapping. Because of their sensitivity to soil conditions, they can be sampled quantitatively for evaluation of soil conditions. Soil samples are heavy to transport and their processing is time consuming, and such sampling leads to disturbance of the soil surface which land-owners do ...