Recent research has shown that biodiversity may has its greatest impact on ecosystem functioning in heterogeneous environments. However, the role of soil heterogeneity as a modulator of ecosystem responses to changes in biodiversity remains poorly understood, as few biodiversity studies have explicitly considered this important ecosystem feature.We conducted a microcosm experiment over two grow...

Soil fauna is essential for ecosystem dynamics as it is involved in biogeochemical processes, promotes nutrient availability, and affects the animal communities associated with plants. In this study, we examine the possible relationship between the soil microarthropod community on foliage production and quality of the shrub Pittocaulon praecox. We also examine the arthropods associated to its f...

Climate warming at high northern latitudes has caused substantial increases in plant productivity of tundra vegetation and an expansion of the range of deciduous shrub species. However significant the increase in carbon (C) contained within above-ground shrub biomass, it is modest in comparison with the amount of C stored in the soil in tundra ecosystems. Here, we use a 'space-for-time' approac...

This study had three main objectives: (1) to evaluate the aboveground biomass and volume yield of three unrelated hybrid poplar clones in 9 year-old riparian buffer strips located on four farms of southern Québec, Canada; (2) to compare yield data at 9 years with previous data (at 6 years); (3) to evaluate how soil fertility, measured using three different soil testing methods (soil nutrient st...

This study aims to evaluate soil climate quantitatively under present and projected climatic conditions across Central Europe (12.1°–18.9° E and 46.8°–51.1° N) and the U.S. Central Plains (90°–104° W and 37°–49° N), with a special focus on soil temperature, hydric regime, drought risk and potential productivity (assessed as a period suitable for crop growth). The analysis was completed for the ...

Food security in the East African Highlands is dependent upon the productivity of lands managed by smallholders who face difficult challenges in maintaining the fertility of their soils. A study was conducted to identify indicators of soil fertility status that are consistent with farmers’ perceptions of soil fertility. Physical, chemical and biological properties of soils were measured from pa...

Agronomic practices, climatic variables, and soil conditions are key factors in crop productivity. Although the effects of soil chemical properties and water and agronomic crop management are known, there is little information about effective soil depth and its influence on crop productivity. Since most crop fertilization systems are based on the productive potential associated with climatic co...

Ecosystem productivity models rely on regional climatic information to estimate temperature and moisture constraints influencing plant growth. However, the productivity response to these environmental factors is uncertain at the global scale and has largely been defined using limited observations from sparse monitoring sites, including carbon flux towers. Recent studies have shown that satellit...

Three young northern temperate forest communities in the north-central United States were exposed to factorial combinations of elevated carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and tropospheric ozone (O3 ) for 11 years. Here, we report results from an extensive sampling of plant biomass and soil conducted at the conclusion of the experiment that enabled us to estimate ecosystem carbon (C) content and cumulative n...

Soil productivity is a complex interaction of physical, chemical, and biological processes. Unfortunately, the effects of biomass removal on these processes are not well understood or easily measured (Powers 2006). For example, removing logging slash from forest stands for biomass production, rather than leaving the harvest residues on site, can change nutrient availability (Sinclair 1992), soi...