Soil Water Content Dynamics Along a Range Condition Gradient in a Shortgrass Steppe

Soil microbial community composition and respiration along an experimental precipitation gradient in a semiarid steppe.

As a primary limiting factor in arid and semiarid regions, precipitation strongly influences soil microbial properties. However, the patterns and mechanisms of soil microbial responses to precipitation have not been well documented. In this study, changes in soil microorganisms along an experimental precipitation gradient with seven levels of precipitation manipulation (i.e., ambient precipitat...

Community responses of arthropods to a range of traditional and manipulated grazing in shortgrass steppe.

Responses of plants to grazing are better understood, and more predictable, than those of consumers in North American grasslands. In 2003, we began a large-scale, replicated experiment that examined the effects of grazing on three important arthropod groups-beetles, spiders, and grasshoppers-in shortgrass steppe of north-central Colorado. We investigated whether modifications of the intensity a...

Soil salinity and nutrients pattern along a distance gradient in coastal region

Soil salinity is considered as one of the major challenges in coastal agriculture in Bangladesh yet geographical extent of soil salinity and nutrients status have received little or no attention. This study investigated the patterns of soil salinity, total nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and sulfur between agricultural and fallow land along a 90 km distance from the coastline in Noakhali, Bang...

Spatial patterns of vegetation and soil fertility along a grazing gradient in a desert steppe in Inner Mongolia, China

Quantitative assessments of water-use efficiency in Temperate Eurasian Steppe along an aridity gradient

Water-use efficiency (WUE), defined as the ratio of net primary productivity (NPP) to evapotranspiration (ET), is an important indicator to represent the trade-off pattern between vegetation productivity and water consumption. Its dynamics under climate change are important to ecohydrology and ecosystem management, especially in the drylands. In this study, we modified and used a late version o...