Soils are viewed in the context of ecosystem services, soil processes and properties, and key attributes and constraints. The framework used is based on the premise that the natural capital of soils that underlies ecosystem services is primarily determined by three core soil properties: texture, mineralogy, and soil organic matter. Up-todate descriptions and geographical distribution of soil or...

Several studies have shown that soil microorganisms play a key role in the success of plant invasion. Thus, ecologists have become increasingly interested in understanding the ecological effects of biological invasion on soil microbial communities given continuing increase in the effects of invasive plants on native ecosystems. This paper aims to provide a relatively complete depiction of the c...

The potential of coupling soil moisture and a Universal Soil Loss Equation-based (USLE-based) model for event soil loss estimation at plot scale is carefully investigated at the Masse area, in central Italy. The derived model, named Soil Moisture for Erosion (SM4E), is applied by considering the unavailability of in situ soil moisture measurements, by using the data predicted by a soil water ba...

Soil-water characteristic curves were determined for Krome calcareous very gravelly loam soil in the laboratory and in situ in an orchard. In the laboratory, soil-water retention was determined with a pressure plate and pressure Tempe cells for soil collected from vegetable fields. In the orchard, soil-water suction measured with tensiometers was compared to volumetric soil-water content (E) de...

Restoration of species-rich grasslands on ex-arable land can help the conservation of biodiversity but faces three big challenges: absence of target plant propagules, high residual soil fertility and restoration of soil communities. Seed additions and top soil removal can solve some of these constraints, but restoring beneficial biotic soil conditions remains a challenge. Here we test the hypot...

Winter soil respiration is a very important component of the annual soil carbon flux in some ecosystems. We hypothesized that, with all other factors being equal, shorter winter SR result in reduced contribution to annual soil C flux. In this study, the contribution of winter soil respiration to annual soil respiration was measured for three sites (grassland: dominated by Artemisia sacrorum, Bo...

General knowledge of the small, invisible, or hidden organisms that make soil one of the most biodiverse habitats on Earth is thought to be scarce, despite their importance in food systems and agricultural production. We provide the first worldwide review of high-quality research that reports on farmers’ knowledge of soil organisms in agriculture. The depth of farmers’ knowledge varied; some fa...

The resistances to liquid water transport in the soil and plant were determined directly and simultaneously from measurements of soil, root, and leaf water potentials and the flux of water through the soil-plant system to the sites of evaporation in the leaf. For soybean (Merr.) transporting water at a steady rate, water potential differences between soil and root were smaller than between root...

The greatest obstacle to soil erosion modelling at larger spatial scales is the lack of data on soil characteristics. One key parameter for modelling soil erosion is the soil erodibility, expressed as the K-factor in the widely used soil erosion model, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and its revised version (RUSLE). The K-factor, which expresses the susceptibility of a soil to erode, is...

The stable carbon isotopic composition of CO 2 (δ 13 C-CO 2) has been studied as an indicator of changes in ecosystem CO 2 exchange. Soil moisture is an important factor in ecosystem CO 2 exchange through its influence on physiological and soil physical processes. However, the majority of previous research analyzing the influence of soil moisture on soil and soil-respired δ 13 C-CO 2 has been c...