Rapid and accurate estimations of the heterotrophic and autotrophic components of total soil respiration (Rs) are important for calculating forest carbon budgets and for understanding carbon dynamics associated with natural and management-related disturbances. The objective of this study was to use deep (60 cm) root exclusion tubes and paired control (i.e., no root exclusion) collars to estimat...

The objectives of this study were to evaluate the contribution of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal hyphae to N uptake from vineyard cover crop litter (Medicago polymorpha), and to examine the soil microbial community under the influence of mycorrhizal roots and extraradical hyphae. Mycorrhizal grapevines (Vitis vinifera) were grown in specially designed containers, within which a polyvinyl ch...

Virtual Reality simulators of heavy machinery are often used for training purposes. However, the complexity of terrain as a dynamical system makes the simulation of earthmoving machinery an specially challenging problem. In this paper, the architecture of an excavator simulator is described, together with the different models used to describe the behavior of the systems involved. Special attent...

The spatial variability exhibited by soil denitriflcation rates is high. As is typical for natural denitriflcation rate measurements, the individual rates of most samples of a given data set are low; however, a few samples often exhibit extremely high rates. Such data are characterized by highly skewed sample frequency distributions. This study was initiated to investigate the underlying mechan...