Climate warming is likely to increase the frequency and severity of forest disturbances, with uncertain consequences for soil microbial communities and their contribution to ecosystem C dynamics. To address this uncertainty, we conducted a meta-analysis of 139 published soil microbial responses to forest disturbances. These disturbances included abiotic (fire, harvesting, storm) and biotic (ins...

Cadmium (Cd) is ubiquitous in the human environment and has toxic effect on soil microbial biomass or its activity, including microbial biomass carbon (C(mic)), dehydrogenase activity (DHA) and basal respiration (BR), etc., C(mic), DHA, BR were used as bioindicators of the toxic effect of Cd in soil. This study was conducted to determine the effects of Cd on soil microbial biomass and its activ...

Legume crops are known to have low soil N uptake early in their life cycle, which can weaken their ability to compete with other species, such as weeds or other crops in intercropping systems. However, there is limited knowledge on the main traits involved in soil N uptake during early growth and for a range of species. The objective of this research was to identify the main traits explaining t...

Suggested Reading: Jenkinson, D. S. and J. N. Ladd. 1981. Microbial biomass in soil: Measurement and turnover. p. 415-471. In E. A. Paul and J. N. Ladd (eds.), Soil Biochemistry, Volume 5. Marcel Dekker, New York. Tunlid, A and D. C. White. 1992. Biochemical analysis of biomass, community structure, nutritional status, and metabolic activity of microbial communities in soil. p. 229-262. In G. S...

Water soluble anionic polyacrylamide (PAM) is a highly effective erosion preventing and infiltration enhancing polymer, when applied at rates of 1–10 g m 3 in furrow irrigation water. PAM greatly reduces sediment, nutrients, pesticides and coliform bacteria in irrigation runoff. There has been some concern about the potential for PAM accumulation to affect microbial ecology. We ran a long-term ...

Overgrazing is a severe problem in several regions in Northwestern China and has caused serious land degradation. Secondary natural succession plays an important role in the accumulation of soil carbon and nitrogen contents. Estimating the effects of grazing exclusion on soil quality and plant diversity will improve our understanding of the succession process after overgrazing and promote judic...

We examined the habitat of juvenile haddock on the eastern Scotian Shelf (off Nova Scotia, Canada) in relation to grab-sampled benthic macrofaunal invertebrate species assemblages in order to determine whether there were significant differences in benthic macrofauna between areas of historically persistent high and low juvenile haddock abundance. Our analyses were conducted over two spatial sca...

Secondary forests are important carbon sinks, but their biomass dynamics vary markedly within and across landscapes. The biotic and abiotic drivers of this variation are still not well understood. We tested the effects of soil resource availability and competition by lianas on the biomass dynamics of young secondary tropical forests in Panama and assessed the extent to which liana effects were ...

Forest ecosystems are among the largest terrestrial carbon reservoirs on our planet earth thus playing a vital role in global carbon cycle. Presently, remote sensing techniques provide proper estimates of forest biomass and quantify carbon stocks. The present study has explored Landsat-8 sensor product and evaluated its application in biomass mapping and estimation. The specific objectives were...