Contemporary trends in cultivated land and their influence on soil/gully erosion river suspended sediment load were analyzed by various landscape zones within the most populated agriculturally developed part of European Russia, covering 2,222,390 km2. Based official statistics from Russian Federation former Soviet Union, this study showed that after collapse Union 1991, there was a steady downw...

Isotopic investigations of two cemetery populations from the Corded Ware Culture in southern Germany reveal new information on the dating of these graves, human diet during this period, and individual mobility. Corded Ware Culture was present across much of temperate Europe ca. 2800-2200 cal. BC and is represented by distinctive artifacts and burial practices. Corded Ware was strongly influence...

Pleistocene mammalian communities display unique features which differ from present-day faunas. The paleocommunities were characterized by the extraordinarily large body size of herbivores and predators and by their unique structure consisting of species now inhabiting geographically and ecologically distinct natural zones. These features were probably the result of the unique environmental con...

Due to the different degrees of controls exerted by biological and geochemical processes, climate changes are suggested to uncouple biogeochemical C, N and P cycles, influencing biomass accumulation, decomposition and storage in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the possible extent of such disruption in grassland ecosystems remains unclear, especially in China's steppes which have undergone rapi...

The potential of grazing lands to sequester carbon must be understood to develop effective soil conservation measures and sustain livestock production. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of grazing on soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), microbial biomass carbon (MBC) in Typical steppe and Desert steppe ecosystems, which are both important grassland resources for animal grazin...

species. It is distributed in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate areas. It is represented in Pakistan by 8 genera and 22 species. The genus Zygophyllum consists of about 100 species, distributed in deserts and steppes from Mediterranean to Central Asia, South Africa and Australia. In Pakistan it is found in the Sindh and Balochistan provinces. The genus Zygophyllum represents the largest ...

The role of European wild horses in horse domestication is poorly understood. While the fossil record for wild horses in Europe prior to horse domestication is scarce, there have been suggestions that wild populations from various European regions might have contributed to the gene pool of domestic horses. To distinguish between regions where domestic populations are mainly descended from local...

The article is devoted to the agrarian migrations of Ukrainians, caused by crisis at end 19th century, policy, which since April 1906 in Russian Empire was entrusted new Prime Minister P. Stolypin. In order prevent social conflicts, local administration and self-governing bodies Ukrainian provinces Dnipro region offered his government their help organizing mass from European part empire territo...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Intraspecific genome size variability of Festuca pallens occurring on relict rocky steppes in Central Europe was studied on two ploidy levels and three geographical scales: (1) local scale of 24 populations, (2) landscape scale of three transects in river canyons or hill systems, and (3) global scale of 160 samples covering the whole distribution area. METHODS DAPI flow cy...

The Tibetan Plateau is an essential area to study the potential feedback effects of soils to climate change due to the rapid rise in its air temperature in the past several decades and the large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, particularly in the permafrost. Yet it is one of the most under-investigated regions in soil respiration (Rs) studies. Here, Rs rates were measured at 42 sit...