Subalpine forest ecosystems influence global carbon cycling. However, little is known about the compositions of their soil microbial communities and how these may vary with soil environmental conditions. The goal of this study was to characterize the soil microbial communities in a subalpine forest watershed in central Montana (Stringer Creek Watershed within the Tenderfoot Creek Experimental F...

Forest land-use changes have long been suggested to profoundly affect soil microbial communities. However, how forest type conversion influences soil microbial properties remains unclear in Tibetan boreal forests. The aim of this study was to explore variations of soil microbial profiles in the surface organic layer and subsurface mineral soil among three contrasting forests (natural coniferous...

Manganese (Mn) contamination of drinking water may cause aesthetic and human health problems when concentrations exceed 50 and 500 μg l, respectively. In the UK, the majority of Mn-related drinking water supply failures originate from unpolluted upland catchments. The source of Mn is therefore soil, but the exact mechanisms by which it is mobilised into surface waters remain unknown. Elevated M...

We investigated the toxicity of soil samples derived from a former municipal landfill site in the South of the Netherlands, where a bioremediation project is running aiming at reusing the site for recreation. Both an organic soil extract and the original soil sample was investigated using the ISO standardized Folsomia soil ecotoxicological testing and gene expression analysis. The 28 day surviv...

A novel thermolysin digestion method for the molecular strain-typing of ruminant TSEs has been developed which resulted in the clearance of cellular prion protein (PrP) from healthy sheep or cattle brain homogenates, while digestion of scrapie or BSE infected samples resulted in the generation of the full-length disease-related isoform, PrP. Using antibodies against the amino terminal region of...

Post mortem changes are important in estimating post mortem interval (PMI). This project's aim was to study the effect of burial and type of clothing on rate of decomposition, which can contribute to estimating PMI for victims. 12 rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) carcasses were separated into 3 groups: no clothing, light clothing and heavy clothing. Control subjects were placed on the ground sur...

Soilmicrobial communitieswere examined in a chronosequence of fourdifferent land-use treatments at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, Kansas. The time series comprised a conventionally tilled cropland (CTC) developed on former prairie soils, two restored grasslands thatwere initiated on former agricultural soils in 1998 (RG98) and 1978 (RG78), and an annually burned native tallgrass prairie ...