Substantial amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can be released during decomposition and these compounds can affect atmospheric chemistry, belowground processes, and the structure of microbial communities in litter and soil. However, we have a limited understanding of the types, quantities and ecological impacts of VOCs emitted from litter. Here we used a closed flow-through system and...

Current building codes lack explicit recommendations on how to simulate the seismic performance of high-rise buildings with multiple underground stories. Designers are typically basing their analyses on subjective engineering judgment and experience. Recent researches shows that seismic response of buildings with basement walls is a complicated phenomenon. This paper studies the seismic behavio...

Recent metaanalyses suggest biodiversity loss affects the functioning of ecosystems to a similar extent as other global environmental change agents. However, the abundance and functioning of soil organisms have been hypothesized to be much less responsive to such changes, particularly in plant diversity, than aboveground variables, although tests of this hypothesis are extremely rare. We examin...

There is increasing evidence showing that microbes can influence plant-insect interactions. In addition, various studies have shown that aboveground pathogens can alter the interactions between plants and insects. However, little is known about the role of soil-borne pathogens in plant-insect interactions. It is also not known how environmental conditions, that steer the performance of soil-bor...

Feedbacks of terrestrial ecosystems to atmospheric and climate change depend on soil ecosystem dynamics. Soil ecosystems can directly and indirectly respond to climate change. For example, warming directly alters microbial communities by increasing their activity. Climate change may also alter plant community composition, thus indirectly altering the soil communities that depend on their inputs...

Discrepancies in scale dynamics often make cohesive structural conclusions difficult, especially when dealing with ecological variance. We studied presence and abundance of grasshopper species in similar, yet distinct, montane habitat of southeast Wyoming and northern Colorado, USA. By limiting ecological variance, grasshopper species structure at two behavioral scales (grouped species dynamics...

Plant interactions greatly affect plant community structure. Dryland ecosystems are characterized by low amounts of unpredictable precipitation as well as by often having biological soil crusts (BSCs) on the soil surface. In dryland plant communities, plants interact mostly as they compete for water resources, and the direction and intensity of plant interaction varies as a function of the temp...

Effects of elevated CO(2) on soil microorganisms are known to be mediated by various interactions with plants, for which such effects are relatively poorly documented. In this review, we summarize and synthesize results from studies assessing impacts of elevated CO(2) on soil ecosystems, focusing primarily on plants and a variety the of microbial processes. The processes considered include chan...

Interactions between the diversity of primary producers (plants) and of decomposers (microbes and mesofaunal communities), the two key functional groups that form the basis of all ecosystems have major consequences on the functioning of agricultural ecosystems. Soil microorganisms control the transformation and mineralization of natural compounds and xenobiotics. The soil microbiota, existing i...

Abstract One of the methods of increasing soil resistance against failure is soil reinforcement using geosynthetics. Soil-geosynthetic interactions are of great importance and are affected by friction and adhesion at their interface. Soil gradation, contact surface roughness and geotextile density are among the factors affecting soil-geotextiles interaction this study, to investigate the eff...