Woody plants are spreading in many alpine and subalpine ecosystems and are expected to continue increasing in response to land abandonment and global warming. This encroachment threatens species diversity, and considerable efforts have been deployed to control it. In this study, we combined a lattice model and field data to investigate the efficiency of different management strategies in contro...

Whether there is a general allometry law across plant species with different sizes and under different environment has long been controversial and shrubs are particularly useful to examine these questions. Here we sampled 939 individuals from 50 forest shrub species along a large altitudinal gradient. We tested several allometry models with four relationships simultaneously (between stem diamet...

The Notch signaling pathway defines a conserved mechanism that regulates cell fate decisions in metazoans. Signaling is modulated by a broad and multifaceted genetic circuitry, including members of the endocytic machinery. Several individual steps in the endocytic pathway have been linked to the positive or negative regulation of the Notch receptor. In seeking genetic elements involved in regul...

Encroachment of woody plants into grasslands has generated considerable interest among ecologists. Syntheses of encroachment effects on ecosystem processes have been limited in extent and confined largely to pastoral land uses or particular geographical regions. We used univariate analyses, meta-analysis and structural equation modelling to test the propositions that (1) shrub encroachment does...

Climate change is expected to increase fire activity and woody plant encroachment in arctic and alpine landscapes. However, the extent to which these increases interact to affect the structure, function and composition of alpine ecosystems is largely unknown. Here we use field surveys and experimental manipulations to examine how warming and fire affect recruitment, seedling growth and seedling...

fluid invasion from water-based drilling mud (wbdm) into the shale formations causes swelling,high pressure zone near the wellbore wall, and eventually wellbore instability problems duringdrilling operations. for the stability of the wellbore, physical plugging of nanoscale pore throats couldbe considered as a logical approach toward avoiding the fluid invasion into the shale formation. thispap...

Plant canopy nitrogen (N) is associated with ecosystem processes such as photosynthetic and aboveground net primary production, particularly in forested ecosystems. Sagebrush N is directly relatable to wildlife nutritional status and contributes to assessments of habitat quality, productivity, plant / soil water dynamics and controls on canopy photosynthesis. Hyperspectral remote sensing studie...

Many arid grassland communities are changing from grass dominance to shrub dominance, but the mechanisms involved in this conversion process are not completely understood. Aeolian processes likely contribute to this conversion from grassland to shrubland. The purpose of this research is to provide information regarding how vegetation changes occur in an arid grassland as a result of aeolian sed...

In recent decades, pastoral abandonment has produced profound ecological changes in the Alps. In particular, the reduction in grazing has led to extensive shrub encroachment of semi-natural grasslands, which may represent a threat to open habitat biodiversity. To reverse shrub encroachment, we assessed short-term effects of two different pastoral practices on vegetation and dung beetles (Coleop...

Increasing abundance of tall, canopy-forming shrubs is one of the primary changes expected in the Arctic tundra biome with recent climate warming, but virtually all evidence for shrub increase comes from North America. Here we demonstrate a novel technique for assessing changes in the extent of tall shrublands in northwest Siberian tundra since the 1960s, using satellite imagery dating to the e...