Alpine ecosystems are quite sensitive to global climatic changes. Drawing from two sets of remote sensing data (1986 and 2000) and field investigations, the ecological index method was used to document ecosystem changes in the Yangtze and Yellow River source regions of central Qinghai–Tibet. Although crucial to understanding alpine ecosystem responses to global climatic changes, and in assessin...

Aim: Soil water is essential for the physiological processes of plant growth and fitness. Owing to the difficulty of assessing wide variations in soil water reserves, plant distribution models usually estimate available water for plants through such climatic proxies as precipitation data (P) or climatic water balance (P minus potential evapotranspiration). We evaluated the ability of simple cli...

This study evaluates the spatial heterogeneity of the soil chemical properties of surface soils across a 1 ha old-growth subtropical karst forest in southwest China.

Microbial functional diversity in four soils sampled in the vicinity of Wanda Glacier, Antarctic Peninsula, was determined using Biolog EcoPlates at 5°C and 25°C. Comparisons of the patterns of substrate utilization and the diversity index showed differences in community composition, reflecting the heterogeneous distribution of microorganisms in this environment. Differences in microbial divers...

Factors governing the turnover of organic matter (OM) added to soils, including substrate quality, climate, environment and biology, are well known, but their relative importance has been difficult to ascertain due to the interconnected nature of the soil system. This has made their inclusion in mechanistic models of OM turnover or nutrient cycling difficult despite the potential power of these...

Plant protection represents one of the strategies to fill the yield gap and to achieve food security, a key topic for India development. Analysis of climate risks for crops indicates that South Asia is one of the regions most exposed to the adverse impact on many plants that are relevant to inhabitants exposed to food safety risks. Furthermore, accumulation of pesticide residues in the aquatic ...

Knowledge of the ecological requirements determining tree species distributions is a precondition for sustainable forest management. At present, the abiotic requirements and the relative importance of the different abiotic factors are still unclear for many temperate tree species. We therefore investigated the relative importance of climatic and edaphic factors for the abundance of 12 temperate...

Agronomic practices, climatic variables, and soil conditions are key factors in crop productivity. Although the effects of soil chemical properties and water and agronomic crop management are known, there is little information about effective soil depth and its influence on crop productivity. Since most crop fertilization systems are based on the productive potential associated with climatic co...