R. Liu, J. Wen, X. Wang, L. Wang, H. Tian, T. T. Zhang, X. K. Shi, J. H. Zhang, and SH. N. Lu Laboratory of Climate Environment and Disasters of Western China, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu 730000, China Received: 25 December 2008 – Accepted: 12 January 2009 – Published: 23 February 2009 Correspondence to: J. ...

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 ...

To provide more insights into the responses of the soil seed bank and vegetation to human disturbance intensity, we selected four land use types, including: native grassland (no human disturbance), abandoned artificial grassland (light human disturbance), artificial grassland (moderate human disturbance), and farmland (severe human disturbance) in a semi-arid climate of northern China. The spec...

Terrestrial vegetation dynamics are closely influenced by both climate and by both climate and by land use and/or land cover change (LULCC) caused by human activities. Both can change over time in a monotonic way and it can be difficult to separate the effects of climate change from LULCC on vegetation. Here we attempt to attribute trends in the fractional green vegetation cover to climate vari...

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...

Climate change is generally predicted to increase net primary production, which could lead to additional C input to soil. In arid central Asia, precipitation has increased and is predicted to increase further. To assess the combined effects of these changes on soil CO2 efflux in arid land, a two factorial manipulation experiment in the shrubland of an arid region in northwest China was conducte...

General Comments: This manuscript, “Atmospheric reactive nitrogen concentrations at ten sites with contrasting land use in an arid region of Central Asia”, is a good baseline assessment of the concentrations of nitrogenous species for an understudied region of the world, the arid Xinjiang region of China. This study will provide foundational information in understanding air quality over this re...

Livestock production by transhumance rearing systems is the major land use and a source of livelihood in most areas of the arid, semiarid, and arid temperate agro-ecological zones of Asia. It is perhaps the best way of exploiting these pastures economically. Lack of feed is the major constraint to improving livestock production during winter and early spring, as the temperatures are extremely l...