biological soil crusts (bscs) result from an intimate association between soil particles and cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, lichens and mosses in different proportions which live on the surface, or immediately in the uppermost millimeters of soil. therefore bscs cover the ground surface as a coherent layer, and influence primary processes such as carbon and nitrogen fixation and hydrologic status...

in drought prone environments wheat crop growth and production depends strongly on the water stored in the soil before anthesis and, although some water remains in the soil after harvest, plants experience water deficit. in order to investigate whether water ex-traction patterns, as a plant feature, have a regulating effect on the amount of water used by them at different soil depths, three whe...

Annual and seasonal evapo-transpiration (ET) were compared among Mojave Desert shrubs with different leaf phenologies over a 3-year period during which annual precipitation varied from well below average to more than twice average. During the wet year, soil wetting fronts reached maximum depths of 0)75 m to '1)95 m, depending on soil texture at the study sites. The evergreen shrubs Larrea tride...

Calligonum mongolicum is a successful pioneer shrub to combat desertification, which is widely used for vegetation restoration in the desert regions of northwest China. In order to reveal the limitations to natural regeneration of C. mongolicum by asexual and sexual reproduction, following the process of sand dune stabilization, we assessed clonal shoots, seedling emergence, soil seed bank dens...

Shallow landslides, triggered by extreme rainfall, are a significant hazard in mountainous landscapes. The hazard posed by shallow landslides depends on the availability and strength of colluvial material in landslide source areas and the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events. Here we investigate how the time taken to accumulate colluvium affects landslide triggering rate in the So...

aslan hashemi1, ali reza shokuhfar*1 1-department of agronomy, islamic azad university, ahvaz branch, ahvaz, iran author for correspondence * corresponding author email address: [email protected] received: 10 june 2015                                                                         accepted: 20 october 2015 abstract soil compaction is a main factor that reduces sugarcane yield...

Management systems influence soil quality over time. A randomized block design in 2 (tillage system) 3 (crop rotation) factorial arrangement was laid-out to evaluate the impact of tillage and crop rotation (2002–2007) on soil quality. Conventional tillage and No-till were factored into continuous corn, corn–soybean, and corn–soybean–wheat–Cowpea systems. Ten soil cores were collected at 0–7.5, ...