Green alder (Alnus viridis ssp. fruticosa) is a dominant understory shrub during secondary successional development of upland forests throughout interior Alaska, where it contributes substantially to the nitrogen (N) economy through atmospheric N2 fixation. Across a replicated 200? year old vegetation chronosequence, we tested the hypotheses that green alder has strong effects on soil chemical ...

Manganese (Mn) contamination of drinking water may cause aesthetic and human health problems when concentrations exceed 50 and 500 μg l, respectively. In the UK, the majority of Mn-related drinking water supply failures originate from unpolluted upland catchments. The source of Mn is therefore soil, but the exact mechanisms by which it is mobilised into surface waters remain unknown. Elevated M...

In northern Japan, declines in soil nitrogen fertility have occurred in paddy–upland rotation systems with soybean cultivation. A six-year lysimeter experiment was conducted to evaluate the nitrogen budget in paddy–upland rotation (three-year for upland soybean, then three-year for flooded paddy rice) and to clarify the effect of preceding compost application (immature or mature compost over fo...

Fire is an important factor controlling the composition and thickness of the organic layer in the black spruce forest ecosystems of interior Alaska. Fire that burns the organic layer can trigger dramatic changes in the underlying permafrost, leading to accelerated ground thawing within a relatively short time. In this study, we addressed the following questions. (1) Which factors determine post...

Landscape redistribution of soil C is common within agricultural ecosystems. Little is known about the effects of upland sediment deposition on C dynamics within riparian wetlands. To assess sedimentation impact, we obtained profile samples of wetland soil and used the combination of (137)Cs, (210)Pb, and (14)C chronological markers to determine rates of C sequestration and mineral deposition o...

Field trials were conducted during 1990 to evaluate the effects of preplant soil fumigation with 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D) on yield and fiber quality of furrow-irrigated cotton cultivars subjected to high population densities of Meloidogyne incognita. We measured the responses of eight upland cotton cultivars with different levels of root-knot nematode resistance and compared the responses of...

Riparian areas are noted for their high biodiversity, but this has rarely been tested across a wide range of taxonomic groups. We set out to describe species richness, species abundance, and community similarity patterns for 11 taxonomic groups (forbs & grasses, shrubs, trees, solpugids, spiders, scarab beetles, butterflies, lizards, birds, rodents, and mammalian carnivores) individually and fo...

Improving cotton yield is a major breeding goal for Chinese upland cotton. Lint percentage is an important yield component and a critical economic index for cotton cultivars, and raising the lint percentage has a close relationship to improving cotton lint yield. To investigate the genetic architecture of lint percentage, a diversity panel consisting of 355 upland cotton accessions was grown, a...

(eds M.C.S. Wopereis et al.) 35 Upland environments are situated at the high end of the toposequence, where rice depends solely on rainfall as the water table is out of the reach of rice roots for much of the growing season. At the lower end of the toposequence, rice plants can reach the water table or profit directly from flood water. Along the toposequence, interactions exist between environm...

1 Corresponding author: [email protected]; (850) 644-8385; fax: (850) 644-5913 2 Current address: Graduate Program in the School of Forest Resources & Environmental Science, Michigan Tech, 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931-1295 USA ABSTRACT: The ravines along the Apalachicola River are recognized for their species-rich mixed hardwood forests. Although steep slopes may have limited l...