crust breaking of saffron is an important operation at the first stage of growth that should be accuratly operated as in this period sprouts of saffron rise up to near the soil surface. after primary irrigation, farmers soften the soil surface by means of different cultivation implements, which enables saffron flowers arise from subsurfarce. this research was conducted to compare tillage implem...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) colonize plant interspaces in many drylands and are critical to soil nutrient cycling. Multiple climate change and land use factors have been shown to detrimentally impact biocrusts on a macroscopic (i.e., visual) scale. However, the impact of these perturbations on the bacterial components of the biocrusts remains poorly understood. We employed multiple long-...

In this study, we conducted rainfall simulation experiments in a cool desert ecosystem to examine the role of biological soil crust disturbance and composition on dissolved and sediment C and N losses. We compared runoff and sediment C and N losses from intact latesuccessional dark cyanolichen crusts (intact) to both trampled dark crusts (trampled) and dark crusts where the top 1 cm of the soil...

Charles Pepe-Ranney1, Chantal Koechli 2, Ruth Potrafka 3, Cheryl Andam 2, Erin Eggleston 2, Ferran Garcia-Pichel 3, Daniel H Buckley1,∗ 1Cornell University, Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Ithaca, NY, USA 2Cornell University, Department of Microbiology, Ithaca, NY, USA 3Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. Correspondence*: Daniel H Buckley Cornell Unive...