1. The high Arctic is the world’s fasting warming biome, allowing access to sections of previously inaccessible land for resource extraction. Starting in 2011, exploration of one of the Earth’s largest undeveloped coal seams was initiated in a relatively pristine, polar desert environment in the Canadian high Arctic. Due to the relative lack of historic anthropogenic disturbance, significant ga...

Increased disturbance of terrestrial ecosystems in recent years for purposes of mineral extraction has created interest in development and optimization of reclamation methodologies for these lands. Currently, criteria for judging surface mine reclamation success, or progress toward reclamation goals, predominantly rely on aboveground indicators that fail to account for the abundance and composi...

[1] Within the FLUXNET network of tower stations for performing long-term measurements of CO2 exchange between forest ecosystems and the atmosphere, most research has focused on mature forests that are strong carbon sinks. Nevertheless, it is just as valuable to quantify fluxes from recently disturbed forests so that we can recognize and predict the impact of disturbance on carbon fluxes. We me...

Soils play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle; they represent a carbon reservoir larger than the atmosphere, they are the site of a number of key carbon transformations (e.g. mineralization and humification), and contain a number of unique carbon pools (e.g. plant litter, humic substances, dissolved organic matter, etc.). Land disturbance associated with surface coal mining results in co...

Introduced mammalian herbivores can negatively affect ecosystem structure and function if they introduce a novel disturbance to an ecosystem. For example, belowground foraging herbivores that bioturbate the soil, may alter process rates and community composition in ecosystems that lack native belowground mammalian foragers. Wild boar (Sus scrofa) disturb the soil system and plant community via ...

Soil enzyme activities are the direct expression of the soil community to metabolic requirements and available nutrients. While the diversity of soil organisms is important, the capacity of soil microbial communities to maintain functional diversity of those critical soil processes through disturbance, stress or succession could ultimately be more important to ecosystem productivity and stabili...

Climate warming is likely to increase the frequency and severity of forest disturbances, with uncertain consequences for soil microbial communities and their contribution to ecosystem C dynamics. To address this uncertainty, we conducted a meta-analysis of 139 published soil microbial responses to forest disturbances. These disturbances included abiotic (fire, harvesting, storm) and biotic (ins...

In cropping systems, the choices adopted for tillage system used and plants cultivated can strongly influence soil microbial population its functional profile. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are an important component of microbiome their mutualistic symbiosis with majority higher grant latter a wide range benefits. The extraradical mycelium developed by these expands volume influenced harbours di...

A considerable part of the global pool of terrestrial carbon is stored in high latitude soils. In these soils, repeated cycles of freezing and thawing creates soil motion (cryoturbation) that in combination with other cryogenic disturbance processes may play a profound role in controlling the carbon balance of the arctic soil. Conditions for cryogenic soil processes are predicted to dramaticall...