Abstract Aims Temperate alley-cropping agroforestry systems maintain agricultural production while offering several environmental benefits. Central benefits of such as the ‘safety-net’-role trees for leached nutrients are mainly due to processes occurring below soil surface: subsoil. Microorganisms in subsoil may play a key role ‘safety-net’-function they can improve capturing and uptake by tre...

These examples can be taken as typical of what has happened wherever native vegetation has been cleared and replaced by pasture. There has been no competition between native and introduced species, either for food or for living space. All but subsoil species among the native earthworms have died out before the introduced lumbricids became established, and the few subsoil earthworms that have re...

Climate warming is likely inducing carbon loss from soils of northern ecosystems, but little evidence comes from large-scale observations. Here we used data from a repeated soil survey and remote sensing vegetation index to explore changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) stock on the Tibetan Plateau during the past two decades. Our results showed that SOC stock in the top 30 cm depth in alpine gra...

In addition to human and veterinary medicine, antibiotics are extensively used in agricultural settings, such as for treatment of infections, growth enhancement, and prophylaxis in food animals, leading to selection of drug and multidrug-resistant bacteria. To help circumvent the problem of bacterial antibiotic resistance, it is first necessary to understand the scope of the problem. However, i...

This report describes a significant increase in the prevalence of hookworm infection in an area of Haiti where intestinal parasites are common, but hookworm has not been common. Changing environmental conditions, specifically deforestation and subsequent silting of a local river, have caused periodic flooding with deposition of a layer of sandy loam topsoil and increased soil moisture. We specu...

While the results of a twoseason study at only one location are too limited to conclude that incorporation is never necessary (it is likely that there are soil or weather conditions for which incorporation provides superior growth) they indicate that there are a variety of composts and weather conditions for ● Blanket applications of all three composts produced as much planted vegetation as tes...

Most urban greening interventions involve soil de-sealing and management to enhance fertility. Management typically requires translocating fertile topsoil the site, which comes at great environmental costs. We hypothesized that de-sealed soils would undergo an increase of their fertility without exogenous application. assessed experimental plots with topsoil, topsoil. Both treatments were veget...