Very little is known about the changes of ground beetle assemblages in the last few decades in the Alps, and different responses to climate change of animal populations living above and below the treeline have not been estimated yet. This study focuses on an altitudinal habitat sequence from subalpine spruce forest to alpine grassland in a low disturbance area of the southeastern Dolomites in I...

In regularly burned grassland on Morro Santana, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, we investigated differences in the floristic composition and their relation to soil properties, aspect and distance from the forest border. In 48 plots of 0.75 m2, we identified a total of 201 species from a local species pool of approximately 450 to 500 species. Most species occurred in low frequencies, showing clumpy di...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the combined impacts of global environmental changes and ecological disturbances on ecosystem functioning, even though such combined impacts might play critical roles in shaping ecosystem processes that can in turn feed back to climate change, such as soil emissions of greenhouse gases. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We took advantage of an accidental, low-sev...

Detailed studies on soil processes commonly involve the use of reconstructed soil columns (e.g. James & Riha, 1989; Liu et al., 1990; Smith et al., 1995). This approach reduces the inherent variability associated with field experiments, allows the simultaneous monitoring of solution and solid phases, and limits the interactive effects from concomitant processes. Sample pretreatment (airdrying, ...

Spatial patterns of soil dN reflect variation in rates of N-cycling processes across landscapes. However, the manner in which soil dN is affected by vegetation and topoedaphic properties under nonsteady state conditions is understood poorly. Here we propose and evaluate a conceptual model that explains how soil dN values will respond to changes in disturbance regimes (intensification of grazing...

Skidding by means of heavy forestry machinery can affect soil physical properties. We assessed the effects of ground based skidding on soil bulk density and total porosity under the Iranian mountainous forest conditions. Treatments included a combination of four levels of traffic intensity (1, 3, 6, and 15 passes) of a Timberjack 450C rubber skidder and two levels of slope (<20% and >20%). The ...

Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) forests across western North America have been undergoing a major mortality event owing to a mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) infestation. We studied biotic and abiotic drivers of growing season soil respiration in four mature stands experiencing different levels of mortality between 2008 and 2012 in southeastern Wyoming, USA. Bark be...

The response of bacterial communities to environmental change may affect local to global nutrient cycles. However the dynamics of these communities following disturbance are poorly understood, given that they are often evaluated over macro-ecological time scales and end-point measurements. In order to understand the successional trajectory of soil bacterial communities following disturbances an...

the goal of this study was to survey the natural vegetation on waste landfills and suggest arestoration plan. in the study, i identified 63 families, 275 species, and 34 varieties of aboveground vascular flora. robinia pseudo-acacia was the dominant tree, with a basal area density of 1.51¡3/ha, followed in decreasing order by salix koreensis and populus sieboldii. twinspan resulted in the class...

seismic piezocone device (scptu) together with resonant column and cyclic triaxial test apparatus are employed to measure small strain shear modulus (g0) of carbonate sandy and clayey soils of southern coasts of iran. a large area of southern regions of iran is formed from clay, silt and sand. in this study, maximum shear modulus that is derived from both field (by seismic piezocone) and labora...