Differing biomass allocation strategy could be a necessary plant-trait associated with invasive weeds in an alien environment. The present study focused on exploring differential biomass allocation pattern as an invasive plant-trait in the two pantropical invasive malvaceous weeds Sida acuta Burm f. and Sida cordifolia L. in an anthropic peri-urban vegetation in Indian dry tropics. Eighty plant...

The compositions of the germinable weed seedbank and aboveground weed communities in a long-term tillage and rotation study were characterized 4, 5, and 6 yr (2002 to 2004) after the adoption of glyphosate-tolerant corn and soybean. Averaged across rotation, mean germinable weed seed density and diversity were greatest in the no-tillage treatment as compared to the minimumand conventional-tilla...

Most plant biomass allocation studies have focused on allocation to shoots versus roots, and little is known about drivers of allocation for aboveground plant organs. We explored the drivers of within-and between-species variation of aboveground biomass allocation across a strong environmental resource gradient, i.e., a long-term chronosequence of 30 forested islands in northern Sweden across w...

BACKGROUND Understanding patterns of biodiversity is a longstanding challenge in ecology. Similar to other biotic groups, arthropod community structure can be shaped by deterministic and stochastic processes, with limited understanding of what moderates the relative influence of these processes. Disturbances have been noted to alter the relative influence of deterministic and stochastic process...

A variety of environmental and biotic factors determine vegetation growth and affect plant biomass accumulation. From temperature to species composition, aboveground biomass storage in forest ecosystems is influenced by a number of variables and usually presents a high spatial variability. With this focus, the aim of the study was to evaluate the variables affecting live aboveground forest biom...

Abstract Scrub rangelands support livestock grazing and provide ecosystem services to their inhabitants. The present study was conducted in Chakwal, an important tract of the Pothwar Plateau, which sustains herds small domestic nomadic ruminants. Urbanization uncontrolled practices have reduced rangeland productivity increased soil erosion resulted poor land conditions. This assessed influence ...

Over the past three decades, large expanses of forest in the Amazon Basin were converted to pasture, many of which later degraded to woody fallows and were abandoned. While the majority of tropical secondary forest (SF) studies have examined post-deforestation or post-agricultural succession, we examined post-pasture forest recovery in 10 forests ranging in age from 0 to 14 years since abandonm...

First rotation Pinus radiata D. Don trees were grown on a nitrogen-deficient sand dune in an experimental design that included lupin (Lupinus arboreus Sims) as an understory species, and biennial application of balanced fertilizer in a replicated split-plot factorial design with thinning treatments as subplots. From an initial 2222 stems ha(-1), stands were thinned to 1483 and 741 trees ha(-1) ...

A substantial amount of global carbon is stored in mature trees. However, no experiments to date test how warming affects mature tree carbon storage. Using a unique, citywide, factorial experiment, we investigated how warming and insect herbivory affected physiological function and carbon sequestration (carbon stored per year) of mature trees. Urban warming increased herbivorous arthropod abund...

A simple model that describes growth in terms of physical and physiological processes is needed to predict growth rates and hence the productivity of trees at particular sites. The linear relationship expected between absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (phi(pa), MJ m(-2)) and dry mass production (G(t)); i.e., G(t) = epsilonphi(pa), where epsilon is the radiation utilization coefficien...