Open-cast lignite mining is causing large-scale and long-term disturbance, resulting in a destruction of existing ecosystems and creation of landscapes formed by overburden spoil piles. Overburden sediments can largely differ from parent geological material of previously existing and undisturbed sites. It is expected that new soils and ecosystems will develop from overburden sediments with elem...

Intensive management of southern pine plantations has yielded multifold increases in productivity over the last half century. The process of harvesting merchantable material and preparing a site for planting can lead to a considerable loss of organic matter. Intensively managed stands may experience more frequent disturbance as rotations decrease in length, exposing the stands to conditions tha...

The type and frequency of disturbances experienced by soil microbiomes is expected to increase given predicted global climate change scenarios and intensified anthropogenic pressures on ecosystems. While the direct effect of multiple disturbances to soil microbes has been explored in terms of function, their effect on the recovery of microbial community composition remains unclear. Here, we use...

Belowground interactions between herbaceous native species and nonnative species is a poorly understood but emerging area of interest to invasive-species researchers. Positive feedback dynamics are commonly observed in many invaded systems and have been suspected in California grasslands, where native plants associate strongly with soil mutualists such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. In respon...

The U.S. Air Force used the chlorinated pesticide, chlordane, to control termites around base housing until it was banned in 1988. As bases are closed, contracted, or realigned, soil issues associated with this pesticide must be addressed. One issue that is not well understood is chlordane volatility. There are documented cases where chlordane applied to soil resulted in vapor intrusion into bu...

This study investigates the effect of conventional tillage and application of the monoculture of sugar cane on soil health. Variables like density, moisture, texture, consistency limits, and preconsolidation stress were taken as indicators of soil quality. The measurements were made at a 120 × 120 m field cropped with sugar cane under conventional tillage. The objective of this work was to char...

-We summarize 8 years of soil physical property responses to herbicide manipulation of the understory in two young longleaf pine stands growing on either Ruston fine sandy loam or Beauregard silt loam soils. We also describe relationships between pine sapling vigor and the soil physical environment across a 3-year period on the Ruston soil and a 2-year period on the Beauregard soil. It is hypot...

Reproduction of the soybean cyst nematode (SCN), Heterodera glycines Ichinohe, on soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr., has been compared in conventional till and no-till field plots. Rate of SCN population density increase during the growing season was lower in no-till than in conventional till plots (3,5), or the number of SCN at harvest was lower in no-till than in conventional till plots (6). In...

Successful conservation plans are conditioned by our ability to detect anthropogenic change in space and time and various statistical analyses have been developed to handle this critical issue. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate a new approach for spatial analysis in conservation biology. Here, we propose a two-step protocol. First, we introduce a new disturbance metric which pro...