The Soil Management Assessment Framework (SMAF) was developed in the U.S.A. and has been used as a tool for assessing and quantifying changes in soil quality/health (SQ) induced by land uses and agricultural practices in that region and elsewhere throughout the world. An initial study using SMAF in Brazil was recently published, but additional research for a variety of soils and management syst...

Multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) has been widely applied for estimating fractional land covers from remote sensing imagery. MESMA has proven effective in addressing inter-class and intra-class endmember variability by allowing pixel-specific endmember combinations. This method, however, assumes that each land cover type has an equal probability of being included in the model...

Improving the capability of land-surface process models to simulate soil moisture assists in better understanding the atmosphere-land interaction. In semi-arid regions, due to limited near-surface observational data and large errors in large-scale parameters obtained by the remote sensing method, there exist uncertainties in land surface parameters, which can cause large offsets between the sim...

Accumulation of soil carbon (C) in ecosystems could help mitigate climate change, particularly in agricultural landscapes, but accumulation rates are thought to depend on land cover and management practices. To uncover relationships between soil properties and vegetation management strategies in the Midwestern USA, we examined soil C and nitrogen (N) content on lands under five management types...

Indicators of land quality (LQIs) are being developed as a means to better coordinate actions on land related issues, such as land degradation. Economic and social indicators are already in regular use to support decision making at global, national and sub-national levels and in some cases for air and water quality, but few such indicators are available to assess, monitor and evaluate changes i...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) play an essential role in complex ecosystems. However, the species diversity and composition of AMF communities remain unclear in semi-arid mountains. Further, it is not well understood if the characteristics of AMF community assemblies differ for different habitat types, e.g., agricultural arable land, artificial forest land, natural grassland, and bush/wood ...

Aims Land use management affects plant carbon (C) supply and soil environments and hence alters soil nitrogen (N) dynamics, with consequent feedbacks to terrestrial ecosystem productivity. The objective of this study was to better identify mechanisms by which land-use management (clipping and shading) regulates soil N in a tallgrass prairie, OK, USA. Methods We conducted 1-year clipping and sha...