Broad-scale animal diversity patterns have been traditionally explained by hypotheses focused on climate-energy and habitat heterogeneity, without considering the direct influence of vegetation structure and composition. However, integrating these factors when considering plant-animal correlates still poses a major challenge because plant communities are controlled by abiotic factors that may, ...

Communities of plant-parasitic nematodes collected from five different vegetation types (canopy woodland, savannah, gallery forest, cultivated perennial, and annual plants) and soils (yellowish red latosols, dark red latosols, arenosols, acrisols, and gleysols) were studied. Ninety percent of the soil samples collected from savannah contained at least four genera of plant-parasitic nematodes. T...

Riparian zones support some of the most dynamic and species-rich plant communities in cold regions. A common conception among plant ecologists is that flooding during the season when plants are dormant generally has little effect on the survival and production of riparian vegetation. We show that winter floods may also be of fundamental importance for the composition of riverine vegetation. We ...

The Sheffield Dynamic Global Vegetation Model has simulated the structure and net carbon exchange of vegetation at five sites along the Kalahari transect where there is a strong gradient in precipitation from 299 to 918mmyr . There has been a decline in precipitation of 8mmyr 1 along the whole of the transect since about 1970. Simulations of vegetation dynamics and structure indicate that this ...

The watershed (DAS) Deli is one of the priority watersheds in the Medium Term Development Plan in 2010-2014 according to the Ministry of Forestry decree (SK 328/Menhut-II/2009), Indonesia. DAS is a complex ecological system in which there is a dynamic equilibrium between the incoming material energy (input) and the material out (output). Naturally, the change in input and output balance is slow...

Invasive alien plant species negatively impact native plant communities by out-competing species or changing abiotic and biotic conditions in their introduced range. River systems are especially vulnerable to biological invasions, because waterways can function as invasion corridors. Understanding interactions of invasive and native species and their combined effects on river dynamics is essent...

The changes in the composition and distribution of vegetation represent one of the most main sources of systematic change on local, regional, or global scale. The temporal evolution of NDVI data strongly linked to changes in the state of the surface is regarded as an effective time window able to show the natural seasonal variations. This study investigated vegetation change between 1998 and 20...

Mounds originating from wind-blown sediment accumulation beneath vegetation (nebkhas) often indicate land degradation in dry areas. Thus far, most nebkha research has focused on individual plants. Here, we aimed to explore population-scale processes (up to scales of about 100 m) that might explain an observed nebkha landscape pattern. We mapped the Rhazya stricta Decne. population in a 3 ha stu...

Dynamic change of vegetation has become a very sensitive problem in China due to climate variability and human’s disturbances in the Yellow river basin. Dynamic simulation and forecast of vegetation are regarded as an effective measure to decision support for local government. This paper presents a new method to support the local government’s effort in ecological protection. In integrates cellu...

Root distribution is treated as a static component in most current dynamic vegetation models (DVMs). While changes in leaf and stem biomass are reflected in leaf area index (LAI) and vegetation height via specific leaf area (SLA) and allometric relationships, most DVMs assume that changes in root biomass do not result in changes in the root distribution profile and rooting depth. That is, the f...