Plant photosynthate fuels carbon-limited microbial growth and activity, resulting in increased rhizosphere nitrogen (N) mineralization. Most soil organic nitrogen is macromolecular (chitin, protein, nucleotides); enzymatic depolymerization is likely rate limiting for plant nitrogen accumulation. Analyzing Avena (wild oat) planted in microcosms containing sieved field soil, we observed increased...

Ecologically based farming conserves and improves the soil resource and protects environmental quality by using organic or natural resources without the application of synthetic chemicals. Soil quality assessment indicates the ability of management systems to optimize soil productivity and to maintain its structural and biological integrity. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of ecologica...

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...

Pseudostellaria heterophylla is an important medicinal plant in China. However, cultivation of P. heterophylla using consecutive monoculture results in significant reductions in yield and quality. In this study, terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis and measurement of soil enzyme activities were used to investigate the regulation of soil micro-ecology to identify w...

*Plant seasonal cycles alter carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) availability for soil microbes, which may affect microbial community composition and thus feed back on microbial decomposition of soil organic material and plant N availability. The temporal dynamics of these plant-soil interactions are, however, unclear. *Here, we experimentally manipulated the C and N availability in a beech forest thro...

Anthropogenic changes in biodiversity and atmospheric temperature significantly influence ecosystem processes. However, little is known about potential interactive effects of plant diversity and warming on essential ecosystem properties, such as soil microbial functions and element cycling. We studied the effects of orthogonal manipulations of plant diversity (one, four, and 16 species) and war...

Phosphogypsum (PG) is produced as a solid waste from phosphatic fertilizer plants. The waste slurry is disposed off in settling ponds or in heaps. This solid waste is now increasingly being used as a calcium supplement in agriculture. This study reports the effectof PG amendmenton soil physico chemical properties, bacterial and fungal count and activities of soil enzymes such as invertase, cell...

As the world's urban population continues to grow, it becomes increasingly imperative to understand the dynamic interactions between human activities and the urban environment. The development of urban environmental geochemistry has yielded a significant volume of scientific information about geochemical phenomena found uniquely in the urban environment, such as the distribution, dispersion, an...

This study investigated the effects of soil crust development on the underlying soil properties. The field sampling work was conducted in June 2016 in the Hobq Desert in Inner Mongolia, North China. Soil crust samples and 0–6, 6–12, 12–18, 18–24, 24–30 cm deep underlying soil samples were taken from five representative areas of different soil crust development stages. All samples were analyzed ...

Biochar (BC) addition to soil is a proposed strategy to enhance soil fertility and crop productivity. However, there is limited knowledge regarding responses of soil respiration and C-cycle enzyme activities to BC and nitrogen (N) additions in a calcareous soil. A 56-day incubation experiment was conducted to investigate the combined effects of BC addition rates (0, 0.5, 1.0, 2.5 and 5.0% by ma...