Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration has led to concerns about potential effects on production agriculture as well as agriculture’s role in sequestering C. In the fall of 1997, a study was initiated to compare the response of two crop management systems (conventional and conservation) to elevated CO2. The study used a split-plot design replicated three times with two management systems as m...

In the Great Plains of North America potential evaporation exceeds precipitation during most months of the year. About 75% of the annual precipitation is received from April through September, and is accompanied by high temperatures and low relative humidity. Dryland agriculture in the Great Plains has depended on wheat production in a wheat-fallow agroecosystem (one crop year followed by a fal...

Dryland wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) are often grown using a wheat–sorghum-fallow (WSF) crop rotation on the semiarid North American Great Plains. Precipitation stored during fallow as soil water is crucial to the success of the WSF rotation. Stubble mulch-tillage (SM) and no-tillage (NT) residue management practices reduce evaporation, but the sp...

Crop canopies and residues have been shown to intercept a significant amount of rainfall. However, rainfall or irrigation interception by crops and residues has often been overlooked in hydrologic modelling. Crop canopy interception is controlled by canopy density and rainfall intensity and duration. Crop residue interception is a function of crop residue type, residue density and cover, and ra...

[1] Soil organic carbon (SOC) contents in many farmlands have been depleted because of the long-term history of intensive cultivation in China. Chinese farmers are encouraged to adopt alternative management practices on their farms to sequester SOC. On the basis of the availability of carbon (C) resources in the rural areas in China, the most promising practices are (1) incorporating more crop ...

Decomposers provide an essential ecosystem service that contributes to sustainable production in rice ecosystems by driving the release of nutrients from organic crop residues. During a single rice crop cycle we examined the effects of four different crop residue management practices (rice straw or ash of burned straw scattered on the soil surface or incorporated into the soil) on rice straw de...

In conservation tillage systems, at least 30% of the soil surface was covered by crop residues which generally contain significant amounts of nitrogen (N). However, little is known about the multi-seasonal recoveries of the N derived from these crop residues in soil-crop systems, notably in northeastern China. In a temperate agro-ecosystem, 15N-labeled maize residue was applied to field surface...

a field study was conducted at the college of agriculture, shiraz university, shiraz, iran to evaluate the effect of different crop residue and nitrogen rates on yield and yield components of two dryland wheat (triticum aestivum l.) cultivars. the experiment was conducted as a strip split plot with four replications. vertical plots included two dryland current wheat cultivars (azar2 and nicknej...