BACKGROUND The palm family occurs in all tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. Palms are of high ecological and economical importance, and display complex spatial patterns of species distributions and diversity. SCOPE This review summarizes empirical evidence for factors that determine palm species distributions, community composition and species richness such as the abiotic environ...

Plant diversity and vegetation distribution in an area are related to the soil physical and chemical properties. The knowledge of relationships between species diversityand soil parameteris essential for sustainable ecosystem management. This study was conducted to investigate the relationships between soil factors and species diversity indices in the protected rangelands of Lashgardar, Malayer...

Spatial patterns of soil dN reflect variation in rates of N-cycling processes across landscapes. However, the manner in which soil dN is affected by vegetation and topoedaphic properties under nonsteady state conditions is understood poorly. Here we propose and evaluate a conceptual model that explains how soil dN values will respond to changes in disturbance regimes (intensification of grazing...

An essential component of soil mapping is classification, a process of assigning spatial soil entities to predefined categories (classes). However, by their nature soils exist as a continuum both in the spatial and attribute domains and often cannot be fitted into discrete categories without introducing errors or at least over-simplification. One approach to mitigate this problem in digital soi...

Methodologies based on indicators occupy a prevalent place when assessing ecosystem functioning and monitoring desertification processes because they are affordable yet do not compromise accuracy. The landscape function analysis (LFA), developed in Australia by David Tongway (CSIRO), uses soil surface indicators to assess the condition of a given ecosystem by producing three numerical indices (...

Soil properties and water contents (u) vary spatially, but management effects on spatial patterns are poorly understood. This study’s objective was to compare surface-soil properties and u in two small watersheds (30–43 ha) in Iowa’s loess hills. Both watersheds were in continuous corn (Zea mays L.) from 1972 through 1995, one (CW1) under conventional tillage and the other (RW3) under ridge til...

Abtract The Mg +2 accumulation on the exchange complex of soils to a very high saturation levels affect their chemical, physical and biological properties. Magnesium has some capacity to develop higher exchangeable sodium levels in clays and soil materials. Colombia has a large area of these soils, located mainly in the main rivers valleys and in the Caribbean Region. In the Cauca River Valley ...

Soil erosion rates and soil quality indicators were measured along two hillslope transects in the Loess Plateau near Yan'an, China. The objectives were to: (a) quantify spatial patterns and controlling processes of soil redistribution due to water and tillage erosion, and (b) correlate soil quality parameters with soil redistribution along the hillslope transects for different land use manageme...