Soil microorganisms are important for climate regulation as well as for plant nutrition. In agricultural soils the microorganisms are affected by management choices, like which type of tillage that is used. Moldboard plowing, the most common tillage practice, increases mineralization which leads to soil organic carbon (SOC) loss, and may thus reduce soil quality. Conservation tillage practices ...

Water is one of the most critical resources derived from natural systems. While it has long been recognized that forest disturbances like fire influence watershed streamflow characteristics, individual studies have reported conflicting results with some showing streamflow increases postdisturbance and others decreases, while other watersheds are insensitive to even large disturbance events. Cha...

Soil quality appears to be an ideal indicator of sustainable land management. Soil is the foundation for nearly all land uses. Soil quality, by definition, reflects the capacity to sustain plant and animal productivity, maintain or enhance water and air quality, and promote plant and animal health. By reflecting the basic capacity of the soil to function, it integrates across many potential use...

a r t i c l e i n f o In soil-mantled landscapes, downslope sediment transport occurs via disturbance-driven processes that vary with climate and vegetation change. To help constrain the long-term (≫10 yr) pattern and rate of soil mixing and transport in forests, we analyzed the distribution of tephra grains in soil along a hillslope transect in the Blue Mountains, SE Washington. Deposited with...

[1] Woody plant encroachment, a worldwide phenomenon, is a major driver of land degradation in desert grasslands. Woody plant encroachment by shrub functional types ultimately leads to the formation of a patchy landscape with fertile shrub patches interspaced with nutrient-depleted bare soil patches. This is considered to be an irreversible process of land and soil degradation. Recent studies h...

Experiments using controlled manipulation of climate variables in the field are critical for developing and testing mechanistic models of ecosystem responses to climate change. Despite rapid changes in climate observed in many high latitude and high altitude environments, controlled manipulations in these remote regions have largely been limited to passive experimental methods with variable eff...

study of soil quality indicators were considered as a useful method in the land use management. changing the land use affect soil hydrological processes such as water infiltration process. spatial variation of water infiltration in soil plays a very important role in hydrologic processes. variability of this process is affected by the inherent and non-inherent characters of the lands. in order ...

Soil seed banks were sampled in undisturbed soil and after soil had been disturbed by tillage (tine, harrow or plough). Seeds were sorted by size and shape, and counted. Size-number distributions were fitted by power law equations that allowed the identification of self-similarity and self-affinity. Self-affinity and thus non-random size-number distribution prevailed in undisturbed soil. Self-s...

Recent studies have suggested that the organic matter contents of undisturbed soils (under natural vegetation) are in equilibrium with biological and biochemical properties. Accordingly, we hypothesised that such equilibria should be disrupted when soils are subjected to disturbance or stress, and that measurement of this disruption can be expressed mathematically and used as a soil quality ind...