Land use intensification is associated with loss of biodiversity and altered ecosystem functioning. Until now most studies on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning focused on random loss of species, while loss of rare species that usually are the first to disappear received less attention. Here we test if the effect of rare microbial species loss on plant productivity ...

Published information is contradictory about the inhibitory or stimulatory effect of living roots on soil organic matter d~m~sition. In this study, i4C-labelled rye straw was exposed in fertilii or unfertilized soil with or without plants (winter rye, Se&e cereuIe) for 49 days under semi-controlled conditions. Our objective was to study the effect of roots on soil organic matter mineralization ...

BACKGROUND Non-productive binding of enzymes to lignin is thought to impede the saccharification efficiency of pretreated lignocellulosic biomass to fermentable sugars. Due to a lack of suitable analytical techniques that track binding of individual enzymes within complex protein mixtures and the difficulty in distinguishing the contribution of productive (binding to specific glycans) versus no...

In some plant species the whole shoot is occasionally removed, as a result of specialist herbivory, grazing, mowing, or other causes. The plant can adapt to defoliation by allocating more to tolerance and less to growth and defense. Plant tolerance to defoliation (TOL1) is typically measured as the ratio between the average dry weight of a group of damaged plants and a control group of undamage...

Vegetation change plays a critical role in the Earth’s carbon (C) budget and its associated radiative forcing in response to anthropogenic and natural climate change1–4. Existing global estimatesofabovegroundbiomasscarbon(ABC)basedonfield survey data provide brief snapshots that are mainly limited to forest ecosystems5–8. Here we use an entirely new remote sensing approach to derive global ABC ...

The general need to slow the depletion of fossil resources and reduce carbon footprints has led to tremendous effort being invested in creating "greener" industrial processes and developing alternative means to produce fuels and synthesize platform chemicals. This work aims to design a microwave-assisted cascade process for a full biomass valorisation cycle. GVL (γ-valerolactone), a renewable g...

Hurricanes cause severe impacts on forest ecosystems in the United States. These events can substantially alter the carbon biogeochemical cycle at local to regional scales. We selected all tropical storms and more severe events that made U.S. landfall between 1900 and 2011 and used hurricane best track database, a meteorological model (HURRECON), National Land Cover Database (NLCD), U. S. Depar...

Relay intercropping systems with rice cultivars (WAB450-24-3-2-P18-HB (V4) and WAB56-50), the competitive Cajanus cajan and the weakly competitive Stylosanthes hamata were evaluated in the tropical savanna zone in Côte d’Ivoire. The INTERCOM model for competition served for data analysis and understanding of the system based on phenological, physiological and morphological characteristics of th...

Loss of plant diversity influences essential ecosystem processes as aboveground productivity, and can have cascading effects on the arthropod communities in adjacent trophic levels. However, few studies have examined how those changes in arthropod communities can have additional impacts on ecosystem processes caused by them (e.g. pollination, bioturbation, predation, decomposition, herbivory). ...