Forest land-use changes have long been suggested to profoundly affect soil microbial communities. However, how forest type conversion influences soil microbial properties remains unclear in Tibetan boreal forests. The aim of this study was to explore variations of soil microbial profiles in the surface organic layer and subsurface mineral soil among three contrasting forests (natural coniferous...

an important part of carbon cycling is carried out in the soil making land use changes, including changes in forestlands, affect soc storage and consequently co2 flux into the atmosphere.the aims followed in this investigation were to study the impacts of conversion of deciduous forests to coniferous ones and deforested land to rangelands, on some of the soil physicochemical properties, organic...

Increased human land use has resulted in the increased homogenization of biodiversity between sites, yet we lack sufficient indicators to predict which species decline and the consequence of their potential loss on ecosystem services. We used comparative phylogenetic analysis to (1) characterize how increasing conversion of forest and grasslands to grazing pasturelands changes plant diversity a...

— China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program pays more than 32 million households to plant trees on highly erodible cropland, and has effected major land-use changes. Farmers retire land indefinitely but receive time-limited subsidies, after which they, in principle, enter nonfarm employment. We analyze annual data we collected on over 3,000 individuals and plots from 1998–2006, which contain vari...

In addition to well-documented negative effects (e.g., environmental degradation and ethnic conflict) Indonesia’s central government programs of transmigration and industrial forest management subvert indigenous rights (even if unintentionally) through appropriation of forested land and migrant subsidies. Although central control can be an effective strategy for resource management, Indonesia’s...

18 Land in the southeastern U.S. is expected to change, e.g., given the potential demand 19 to develop forest-to-fuel technologies or, conversely, cropification of current forests to 20 increase food production. Possible future PM2.5 and O3 air quality for two land use/land cover 21 change (LULCC) scenarios, reforestation and cropland conversion, are compared to a 22 reference case scenario for...

Farmland conversion, i.e. conversion of farmland into non-agricultural construction land, is an unavoidable trend in global economic development(Fazal 2001; Tan et al. 2005; Bugri 2008). In China, which is relatively short of farmland resources and yet in the phase of accelerating urbanization, conversion of farmland is closely related to national food security, ecological security as well as s...

[1] In the southeastern United States (SE), the conversion of abandoned agricultural land to forests is the dominant feature of land-cover change. However, few attempts have been made to quantify the impact of such conversion on surface temperature. Here, this issue is explored experimentally and analytically in three adjacent ecosystems (a grass-covered old-field, OF, a planted pine forest, PP...