While many ecosystem processes depend on biodiversity, the relationships between agricultural plant diversity and soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics remains controversial. Our objective was to examine how temporal plant diversity (i.e. crop rotation) influences residue decomposition, a key ecosystem function that regulates nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions, and soil organic matt...

Forest soils store an immense quantity of labile carbon (C) and a may be a large potential sink for atmospheric C. Forest management practices such as fertilization may enhance overall C storage in soils, yet changes in physiological processes following nutrient amendments have not been widely investigated. We intensively monitored belowground C dynamics for nearly 200 days following diammonium...

A common finding in multiple CO(2) enrichment experiments in forests is the lack of soil carbon (C) accumulation owing to microbial priming of 'old' soil organic matter (SOM). However, soil C losses may also result from the accelerated turnover of 'young' microbial tissues that are rich in nitrogen (N) relative to bulk SOM. We measured root-induced changes in soil C dynamics in a pine forest ex...

The garlic stalk is a byproduct of garlic production and normally abandoned or burned, both of which cause environmental pollution. It is therefore appropriate to determine the conditions of efficient decomposition, and equally appropriate to determine the impact of this decomposition on soil properties. In this study, the soil properties, enzyme activities and nutrient dynamics associated with...

environmental factors mainly temperature are believed to determine the distribution and population dynamics of fusarium species in a natural ecosystem. species may be restricted in their distribution by adaptation to specific sets of soil environmental conditions. population dynamics of five fusarium species representative of different climatic conditions were studied at three levels of tem...

The composition of soil, particularly its organic matter content, reflects its role as a major controller of ecosystem functioning and soil fertility (Paul and Collins 1998, Basso et al. 2011, Bhardwaj et al. 2011). Soil organic matter (SOM), the largest global reservoir of terrestrial organic carbon (C), contains three to four times as much stored C as either the atmosphere or plant biomass. T...

The transcription dynamics of subunit A of the key gene in methanogenesis (methyl coenzyme M reductase; mcrA) was studied to evaluate the relationship between process rate (methanogenesis) and gene transcription dynamics in a peat soil ecosystem. Soil methanogen process rates were determined during incubation of peat slurries at temperatures from 4 to 37 degrees C, and real-time quantitative PC...

The pupal development of Aethina tumida Murray (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae) was studied at various combinations of thermo-hygrometric soil conditions (temperatures of 16, 18, and 20 degrees C and soil water content levels of 0.37, 0.56, and 0.73 m3 water per cubic meter of dry soil) representative of southeastern Canada. Survivorship and development duration of A. tumida pupae, as well as sex rati...

Improving predictions of soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics by multi-compartment models requires validation of turnover times of different SOC pools. Techniques such as laboratory incubation and isotope analysis have been adopted to estimate C turnover times, yet no studies have systematically compared these techniques and assessed the uncertainties associated with them. Here, we tested whether...