Climate change and land-use activities are increasing fire activity across much of the Siberian boreal forest, yet the climate feedbacks from forest disturbances remain difficult to quantify due to limited information on forest biomass distribution, disturbance regimes and post-disturbance ecosystem recovery. Our primary objective here was to analyse post-fire accumulation of Cajander larch (La...

As changes in air temperature, precipitation, and air humidity are expected in the coming decades, studies on the impact of these environmental shifts on plant growth and functioning are of major importance. Greatly understudied aspects of climate change include consequences of increasing air humidity on forest ecosystems, predicted for high latitudes. The main objective of this study was to fi...

Fungal plant pathogens are common in natural communities where they affect plant physiology, plant survival, and biomass production. Conversely, pathogen transmission and infection may be regulated by plant community characteristics such as plant species diversity and functional composition that favor pathogen diversity through increases in host diversity while simultaneously reducing pathogen ...

Insects and nematodes are the most diverse and abundant groups of multicellular animals feeding on plants on either side of the soil-air interface. Several herbivore-induced responses are systemic, and hence can influence the preference and performance of organisms in other plant organs. Recent studies show that plants mediate interactions between belowground plant parasitic nematodes (PPNs) an...

One of the main drivers of tropical forest loss is their conversion to oil palm, soy or cacao plantations with low biodiversity and greatly reduced carbon storage. Southeast Asian cacao plantations are often established under shade tree cover, but are later converted to non-shaded monocultures to avoid resource competition. We compared three co-occurring cacao cultivation systems (3 replicate s...

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Effects of plant diversity on higher trophic levels 2.1. How plant diversity affects the soil food-web 2.2. Links between plant diversity and aboveground organisms 3. Effects of above-and belowground organisms on plant diversity and ecosystem processes 3.1. How decomposers affect resource availability and plant diversity 3.2. Aboveground herbivores and plant diversit...

[1] Spatially-distributed forest biomass components are essential to understand carbon cycle and the impact of biomass burning emissions on air quality. We estimated the density of forest biomass components (foliage biomass, branch biomass, and aboveground biomass) at a spatial resolution of 1 km across the Contiguous United States using foliage-based generalized allometric models and Moderate-...

We measured aboveground plant biomass, aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP), detritus accumulation, and nitrogen and phosphorus uptake by aboveground vegetation in six Metrosideros polymorpha stands on the windward slopes of Mauna Loa, Hawai‘i, USA. Our objective was to quantify the effects of elevation (primarily temperature) on ecosystem properties during primary succession, as a key t...