Subzero temperatures may adversely affect animals by their direct lethal effects and by the damage caused by ice formation (Ramløv, 2000). Animals deal with the latter by three basic strategies. Freeze avoiding animals prevent ice formation in their bodies and supercool, keeping their body fluids liquid at temperatures below their melting point, but die if freezing occurs. In contrast, freezing...

Concern over nonpoint source P losses from agricultural lands to surface waters in frigid climates has focused attention on the role of freezing and thawing on P loss from catch crops (cover crops). This study evaluated the effect of freezing and thawing on the fate of P in bare soils, soils mixed with dairy manure, and soils with an established catch crop of annual ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum...

[1] Thawing and freezing processes are key components in permafrost dynamics, and these processes play an important role in regulating the hydrological and carbon cycles in the northern high latitudes. In the present study, we apply a well-developed soil thermal model that fully couples heat and water transport, to simulate the thawing and freezing processes at daily time steps across multiple ...

Very little is known about the capacity of soil chytrids to withstand freezing in the field. Tolerance to freezing was tested in 21 chytrids isolated from cropping and undisturbed soils in temperate Australia. Samples of thalli grown on peptone-yeast-glucose (PYG) agar were incubated for seven days at -15 degrees C. Recovery of growth after thawing and transferring to fresh medium at 20 degrees...

Soil freezing characteristic curve (SFCC) defines the relationship between unfrozen water content and subzero temperature. The SFCC is widely applied to estimate soil properties. current study explored effects of initial content, dry density, type desalination on during a freezing-thawing process. It showed that had great impacts SFCC, while density an insignificant effect SFCC. Hysteresis beha...

Phosphorus (P) released from plants after freezing at the end of the growing season may be a contributor to P in runoff from agricultural landscapes. We evaluated P release from alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) and mixed grass species [mainly quackgrass (Agropyron repens)] after freezing or drying in laboratory and field studies. Freezing released 18-30 % of the total P as dissolved reactive P (DRP...

A shift in chaparral species composition occurs from coastal to inland sites of the Santa Monica Mountains of southern California. Past studies have attributed this pattern to differential adaptations of chaparral species to gradients in moisture and solar radiation. We examined an alternate hypothesis, that shifts in species composition from coastal to inland sites is a result of differential ...