BACKGROUND In a semi-arid ecosystem, water is one of the most important factors that affect vegetation dynamics, such as shrub plantation. A water use strategy, including the main water source that a plant species utilizes and water use efficiency (WUE), plays an important role in plant survival and growth. The water use strategy of a shrub is one of the key factors in the evaluation of stabili...

Nitrogen (N) deposition and its ecological effects on forest ecosystems have received global attention. Plantations play an important role in mitigating climate change through assimilating atmospheric CO2. However, the mechanisms by which increasing N additions affect net ecosystem production (NEP) of plantations remain poorly understood. A field experiment was initialized in May 2009, which in...

Tropical agriculture is expanding rapidly at the expense of forest, driving a global extinction crisis. How to create agricultural landscapes that minimise the clearance of forest and maximise sustainability is thus a key issue. One possibility is protecting natural forest within or adjacent to crop monocultures to harness important ecosystem services provided by biodiversity spill-over that ma...

Palm oil is the most widely traded vegetable oil globally, with demand projected to increase substantially in the future. Almost all oil palm grows in areas that were once tropical moist forests, some of them quite recently. The conversion to date, and future expansion, threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Today, consumer pressure is pushing companies toward deforestat...

the quantitative performance of wheat crop under 1-5 year old poplar plantations in irrigated agro-ecosystem was studied to ascertain the biological yield of tree and crop. results revealed that growth and yield of wheat decreased significantly with the increase in poplar age. the per cent reduction in net grain yield was 17% under one year old poplar plantation, which increased to 52.15% under...

objective: ecosystems with mixed species compared to the ones with pure compositions provide a broader range of options in the fields of biodiversity, conservation, protection and restoration. nearly all forest plantations are established as monocultures, but research has shown that there are potential advantages to be gained by using carefully designed species mixtures in place of monocultures...

In Brazil, plantations of exotic species such as Eucalyptus have expanded substantially in recent years, due in large part to the great demand for cellulose and wood. The combination of the steep slopes in some of these regions, such as the municipalities located close to the Serra do Mar and Serra da Mantiqueira, and the soil exposure that occurs in some stages in the Eucalyptus cultivation cy...