Morphological and physiological characteristics of biological soil crusts (BSCs) enhance soil stability and fertility, and influence soil chemistry. However, the effect of BSCs on soil physico-chemical properties may vary depending on taxa (cyanobacteria, lichen, bryophytes) and species, and be susceptible to soil surface disturbance. We examined a wide variety of soil physico-chemical properti...

The present study was conducted to examine photosynthetic characteristics of three dominant grass species (Agropyron cristatum, Leymus chinensis, and Cleistogenes squarrosa) and their responses to burning and nitrogen fertilization in a semiarid grassland in northern China. Photosynthetic rate (P(n)), stomatal conductance (g(s)), and water use efficiency (WUE) showed strong temporal variability...

Many recent studies have focused on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, such as investigations into the productivity of experimental plant communities. One of the central issues affecting the functioning of ecosystems is the diversity of resident species richness and the composition of the plant community. However, one challenge to experimental studies is that resul...

Improving estimates of carbon inventories in soils is currently hindered by lack of a rapid analysis method for total soil carbon. A rapid, accurate, and precise method that could be used in the field would be a significant benefit to researchers investigating carbon cycling in soils and dynamics of soil carbon in global change processes. We tested a new analysis method for predicting total soi...

Dryland ecosystems account for ca. 27% of global soil organic carbon (C) reserves, yet it is largely unknown how climate change will impact C cycling and storage in these areas. In drylands, soil C concentrates at the surface, making it particularly sensitive to the activity of organisms inhabiting the soil uppermost levels, such as communities dominated by lichens, mosses, bacteria and fungi (...

Coccidioidomycosis is a fungal disease found only in the Western Hemisphere. It is caused by two nearly identical species, Coccidioides immitis and C. posadasii, generically referred to as the “Californian” and “non-Californian” species respectively [1]. The fungus grows in a mycelial phase (see Box 1) in the soil within a geographically delineated area of the United States known as the Lower S...

Grazing exclusion (GE) has been deemed as an important approach to enhance the soil carbon storage of semiarid grasslands in China; however, it remains unclear how different organic carbon (OC) components in soils vary with the duration of GE. Here, we observed the changing trends of different OC components in soils with increased GE duration in five grassland succession series plots, ranging f...

A new index for agricultural drought monitoring is presented based on the integration of different soil/vegetation remote sensing observations. The synergistic fusion of the surface soil moisture (SSM) from the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) derived land surface temperature (LST), and water/vegetation indices for a...

Similar land-use types usually have similar soil properties, and, most likely, similar microbial communities. Here, we assessed whether land-use types or soil chemical properties are the primary drivers of soil microbial community composition, and how changes in one part of the ecosystem affect another. We applied Ion Torrent sequencing to the bacterial and fungal communities of five different ...

The interactions between soil invertebrates and land use and management are fundamental for soil quality assessment but remain largely unaddressed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the changes in soil arthropod community of an entisol brought about by different land use systems under semiarid climate in Pernambuco State, Brazil. The soil invertebrate community was sampled using pitfall tra...