epizoochory and endozoochory are well-known mechanisms by which seeds are dispersed by animals. since, livestock gather around the watering-points to rest and drink, we expected to find that seeds would be frequently moved to the areas surrounding watering-points, resulting a higher soil seed density (and diversity) closest to the water. we investigated this issue by assessing soil seed bank de...

Urban heat island (UHI) countermeasures are of growing interest for cities. Field studies of their micro-climatic effects are scarce, yet are essential to properly evaluate their effectiveness and that of anti-UHI policies. The standard approach to determining their micro-climatic effects is to study the difference in measurements made at case and control stations. However, measurements conduct...

The downward movement of carbofuran in two Malaysian soil types was studied using soil columns. The columns were filled with disturbed and undisturbed soils of either the Bagan Datoh soil (clay) or the Labu soil (sandy clay). The average total percentage of carbofuran in the leachate of the undisturbed Labu soil after 14 days of watering (80.8%) was approximately similar to that of the total am...

The lerp-forming psyllid, Creiis lituratus Froggatt, is the most damaging pest of Eucalyptus dunnii Maiden plantations growing in north-eastern New South Wales. During the past 10 years there have been numerous reports that stands of E. dunnii planted on low-lying areas that were prone to waterlogging were also prone to infestation by C. lituratus. The objective of this shadehouse study was to ...

More severe summer droughts are predicted for mid-latitudes in Europe. To evaluate the impact on forest ecosystems and more specifically on forest regeneration, we studied the response to summer drought in oak seedlings (Quercus petraea). Acorns were collected from different mother trees in three stands in Belgium, sown in pots and grown in non-heated greenhouse conditions. We imposed drought o...

to evaluate the effects of drought stress and re-watering on nodal roots initiation and growth, two glasshouse experiments were conducted in commonwealth scientific and industrial research organization (csiro) in australia during 2008-2009. the experimental designs in both experiments were factorial in a randomized complete block design with two factors. first factor was drought stress and seco...

Conifers have complex defense responses to initial attacks by insects and pathogens that can have cascading effects on success of subsequent colonizers. However, drought can affect a plant's ability to respond to biotic agents by potentially altering the resources needed for the energetically costly production of induced defense chemicals. We investigated the impact of reduced water on induced ...

In this paper, it is proposed an irrigation control system able to use in an efficient way the water in greenhouses of heterogeneous plants without sacrificing the good condition of them, to accomplish this, firstly it is proposed a clustering of plants based on the irrigation needs and secondly implementation of a genetic algorithm that establishes the optimum watering times and waiting betwee...

Seedlings of Salix eriocephala Michx., Salix sericea Marsh., and their F1 hybrids were tested for their growth under contrasting water conditions. One-year old seedlings were grown in pots and subjected to one of two experiments, a scheduled-watering experiment (watered every 1, 4, 8, or 12 days) or a dry-down experiment (no watering after an initial period without water limitation). In the sch...