Soybean is the most important oilseed cultivated in the world and Brazil is the second major producer. Expansion of soybean cultivation has direct and indirect impacts on natural habitats of high conservation value, such as the Brazilian savannas (Cerrado). In addition to deforestation, land conversion includes the use of fertilizers and pesticides and can lead to changes in the soil microbial ...

How diversity influences the stability of a community function is a major question in ecology. However, only limited empirical investigations of the diversity-stability relationship in soil microbial communities have been undertaken, despite the fundamental role of microbial communities in driving carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, we conducted a microcosm exp...

A number of indicators and signals that lend themselves to monitoring by remote-sensing satellites provide a warning of land degradation. These include loss of vegetative cover, wind and water erosion, soil salinization, deterioration of the soil structure, drier soil, increased reflectance, higher land surface temperatures, and changes in land cover type. But because soil and vegetation change...

The occurrence of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes in the environment has become a subject of growing concern. The extensive use of vancomycin and other pharmaceuticals may alter the biodiversity of soil microbial communities and select antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to evaluate the impact of vancomycin and/or vancomycin-resistant Citrobacter f...

risk assessment of soil erosion, one of the most important land degradation problems worldwide, is very essential for land and water resources management, and development of soil conservation methods. in the present study, the temporal changes of soil erosion risk were assessed from 1987 to 2010, based on the revised universal soil loss equation (rusle) using remote sensing (rs) and geographic ...

Transport and transformation processes of solid, liquid and gaseous compounds/components in soils are intimately connected and strongly dependent on the state of soil structure and pore space geometries. Soil structure in turn is inherently dynamic due to changes in pore water pressure resulting in shrinking and swelling and/or soil compaction and shear deformation by applying external loads an...

Negative feedback between plant and soil microbial communities can be a key determinant of vegetation structure and dynamics. Previous research has shown that negative feedback between black cherry (Prunus serotina) and soil pathogens is strongly distance dependent. Here, we investigate the temporal dynamics of negative feedback. To examine short-term changes, we planted successive cycles of se...

Soil moisture estimation studies using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) routinely utilise only the amplitude part of the received echo. In this study, repeat-pass Cand L-band interferometric SAR coherence from 2007 2009 was evaluated for the detection of surface soil moisture changes in the presence of vegetation using two different approaches. In the first analysis, the association between low c...

[1] Predicted precipitation regime changes in arid ecosystems have the potential to alter soil C balance, but the influence of changes in different aspects of precipitation (amount, seasonality, and intensity) and the factors contributing to such effects are poorly understood. We used a process-based ecosystem model (PALS) that was modified, parameterized, and evaluated for a Mojave Desert ecos...