Distillery sludge application in degraded soils is amongst the most important economical resources for the soil fertility amelioration through improvement in soil water-holding capacity, texture, structure, nutrients retention, roots penetration, and reduction in soil acidity [1-3]. Presently due to the ever increasing number of sugar mills and distillery units in the country, it is now become ...

How diversity influences the stability of a community function is a major question in ecology. However, only limited empirical investigations of the diversity-stability relationship in soil microbial communities have been undertaken, despite the fundamental role of microbial communities in driving carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, we conducted a microcosm exp...

Biogeochemical properties, including nutrient concentrations, carbon gas fluxes, microbial biomass, and hydrolytic enzyme activities, were determined along a strong nutrient gradient in an ombrotrophic peatland in the Republic of Panama. Total phosphorus in surface peat decreased markedly along a 2.7 km transect from the marginal Raphia taedigera swamp to the interior sawgrass swamp, with simil...

Schnürer, Y., 2006. Influence of soil properties and organic pesticides on soil microbial metabolism. Doctor’s dissertation. ISSN 1652-6880, ISBN 91-576-7267-9. In many areas of the world undesirable dispersal of organic pesticides into untargeted environments has occurred, and is continuing, raising serious concerns about their potential impact on the environment and human health. The main age...

Soil samples were collected at both jointing and maturing stages of maize and wheat to compare the effects of 4-year no-tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) on seasonal variations of microbial biomass carbon (C), metabolic quotient, and invertase activity in a sandy loam soil in North China. Soil invertase activity significantly increased (P < 0.05) from summer to spring of the next year ...

Warming due to global climate change is predicted to reach 2°C in tropical latitudes. There is an alarming paucity of information regarding the effects of air temperature on tropical agroecosystems, including foraging pastures. Here, we investigated the effects of a 2°C increase in air temperature over ambient for 30 days on an established tropical pasture (Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil) do...

Forest floor food webs play pivotal roles in carbon cycling, but they are rarely considered in models of carbon fluxes, including soil carbon dioxide emissions (respiration), under climatic warming. The indirect effects of invertebrates on heterotrophic (microbial and invertebrate) respiration through interactions with microbial communities are significant and will be altered by warming. Howeve...

Wildfires affecting forest ecosystems and post-fire silvicultural treatments may cause considerable changes in soil properties. The capacity of different microbial groups to recolonise soil after disturbances is crucial for proper soil functioning. The aim of this work was to investigate some microbial soil properties and enzyme activities in semiarid and dry Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis M.) f...

Soil microbes play critical roles in regulating terrestrial carbon (C) cycle and its feedback to climate change. However, it is still unclear how the soil microbial community and abundance respond to future climate change scenarios. In this meta-analysis, we synthesized the responses of microbial community and abundance to experimental warming from 64 published field studies. Our results showed...