We investigated soil streptomycete communities associated with four host plant species (two warm season C4 grasses: Andropogon gerardii, Schizachyrium scoparium and two legumes: Lespedeza capitata, Lupinus perennis), grown in plant communities varying in species richness. We used actinobacteria-selective PCR coupled with pyrosequencing to characterize streptomycete community composition and str...

suitable soil structure is important for crop growth. one of the main characteristics of soil structure is the size of soil aggregates. there are several ways of showing the stability of soil aggregates, among which the determination of the median weight diameter of soil aggregates is the most common method. in this paper, a method based on adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (anfis) was used...

The effects of climate change on soil organic matter-its structure, microbial community, carbon storage, and respiration response-remain uncertain and widely debated. In addition, the effects of climate changes on ecosystem structure and function are often modulated or delayed, meaning that short-term experiments are not sufficient to characterize ecosystem responses. This study capitalized on ...

Atmospheric CO2 concentration is continuously increasing, and previous studies have shown that elevated CO2 (eCO2) significantly impacts C3 plants and their soil microbial communities. However, little is known about effects of eCO2 on the compositional and functional structure, and metabolic potential of soil microbial communities under C4 plants. Here we showed that a C4 maize agroecosystem ex...

There are great concerns about the impacts of soil biodiversity loss on ecosystem functions and services such as nutrient cycling, food production, and carbon storage. A diverse community of soil organisms that together comprise a complex food web mediates such ecosystem functions and services. Recent advances have shed light on the key drivers of soil food web structure, but a conceptual integ...

pedomodels have become a popular topic in soil science and environmentalresearch. they are predictive functions of certain soil properties based on other easily orcheaply measured properties. the common method for fitting pedomodels is to use classicalregression analysis, based on the assumptions of data crispness and deterministic relationsamong variables. in modeling natural systems such as s...

The active layer of soil overlaying permafrost in the Arctic is subjected to dramatic annual changes in temperature and soil chemistry, which likely affect bacterial activity and community structure. We studied seasonal variations in the bacterial community of active layer soil from Svalbard (78°N) by co-extracting DNA and RNA from 12 soil cores collected monthly over a year. PCR amplicons of 1...

Most soil studies aim a better characterization of the system through indicators. In the present study nematofauna and soil structure were chosen as indicators to be assess soil health as related to agricultural practices. The field research was carried out on the two fodder cropping systems continuous maize (CM, Zea mays L.) and a 3-year rotation of silage-maize – silage-barley (Hordeum vulgar...

soil to the atmosphere and it is measured at the soil surface (Rolston, 1986). Increases of soil CO2 efflux Little is known about the short-term effects (hours to days) of are not always preceded by increases in soil respiration tillage on labile pools of C and N, or microbial activity and community composition. We examined the effects of rototillage on microbial (Calderón et al., 2000). Tillag...