The need to reduce soil erosion, maximize soil water conservation, and optimize grain production in dryland cropping systems in the Central Great Plains has culminated in development of nontilled fallow systems. These systems have greatly reduced the degree of soil disturbance, and the amount and degree of residue incorporation. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the influence of soi...

Seagrasses are among the Earth's most efficient and long-term carbon sinks, but coastal development threatens this capacity. We report new evidence that disturbance to seagrass ecosystems causes release of ancient carbon. In a seagrass ecosystem that had been disturbed 50 years ago, we found that soil carbon stocks declined by 72%, which, according to radiocarbon dating, had taken hundreds to t...

the main factors affecting environmental sensitivity to degradation are soil, vegetation, climate and management, through either their intrinsic characteristics or by their interaction on the landscape. different levels of degradation risks may be observed in response to particular combinations of the aforementioned factors. for instance, the combination of inappropriate management practices an...

The response of microbial functional diversity as well as its resistance to stress or disturbances caused by the introduction of an exotic tree species, Acacia holosericea, ectomycorrhized or not with Pisolithus albus, was examined. The results show that this ectomycorrhizal fungus promotes drastically the growth of this fast-growing tree species in field conditions after 7 years of plantation....

The impacts of hurricane disturbance and climate variability on carbon dynamics in a coastal forested wetland in South Carolina of USA were simulated using the Forest-DNDC model with a spatially explicit approach. The model was validated using the measured biomass before and after Hurricane Hugo and the biomass inventories in 2006 and 2007, showed that the ForestDNDC model was applicable for es...

Mechanized forest harvest operations induce changes in soil physical properties, which have the potefitial to impzct soil sustai~ability and forest productivity. The assessment of soil compaction and its spatial variability has been determined previously through the identification and tabulation of visual soil disturbance classes and soil physical changes associated with each disturbailce class...

Can CSR theory, in conjunction with a recently proposed globally calibrated CSR ordination ("StrateFy"), using only three easily measured leaf traits (leaf area, specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content) predict the functional signature of herbaceous vegetation along experimentally manipulated gradients of soil fertility and disturbance? To determine this, we grew 37 herbaceous species in...

In response to the increasing global demand for energy, oil exploration and development are expanding into frontier areas of the Arctic, where slow-growing tundra vegetation and the underlying permafrost soils are very sensitive to disturbance. The creation of vehicle trails on the tundra from seismic exploration for oil has accelerated in the past decade, and the cumulative impact represents a...