With global change expected to alter aspects of the carbon (C) cycle, empirical data describing how microorganisms function in different environmental conditions are needed to increase predictive capabilities of microbially-driven decomposition models. Given the importance of accelerated C fluxes during early decay in C cycling, we characterized how varying litter qualities (maple vs. oak) and ...

Forest soils store an immense quantity of labile carbon (C) and a may be a large potential sink for atmospheric C. Forest management practices such as fertilization may enhance overall C storage in soils, yet changes in physiological processes following nutrient amendments have not been widely investigated. We intensively monitored belowground C dynamics for nearly 200 days following diammonium...

Soil microbial biomass and enzyme activities have an important influence on nutrient cycling. The temporal variation in soil microbial biomass C, N, and enzyme activities during the growing season were determined under three different alpine grasslands in Northern Tibet. The results showed that soil microbial biomass C, and N contents and enzyme activities of the alpine meadow (AM) and the alpi...

Forest ecosystems are among the largest terrestrial carbon reservoirs on our planet earth thus playing a vital role in global carbon cycle. Presently, remote sensing techniques provide proper estimates of forest biomass and quantify carbon stocks. The present study has explored Landsat-8 sensor product and evaluated its application in biomass mapping and estimation. The specific objectives were...

Use of organic amendments is a valuable strategy for crop production. However, it remains unclear how organic amendments shape both soil microbial community structure and activity, and how these changes impact nutrient mineralization rates. We evaluated the effect of various organic amendments, which range in Carbon/Nitrogen (C/N) ratio and degradability, on the soil microbiome in a mesocosm st...

Historically, terrestrial food web theory has been compartmentalized into interactions among aboveground or belowground communities. In this study we took a more synthetic approach to understanding food web interactions by simultaneously examining four trophic levels and investigating how nutrient (nitrogen and carbon) and detrital subsidies impact the ability of the belowground microbial commu...

The objective of this study was to investigate the ability of a culture highly enriched with the polyphosphate-accumulating organism, "Candidatus Accumulibacter phosphatis" clade IIC, to adjust their metabolism to different phosphate availabilities. For this purpose the biomass was cultivated in a sequencing batch reactor with acetate and exposed to different phosphate/carbon influent ratios du...

Reservoirs and lakes were compared to test the hypothesis that they are similar with respect to factors driving the variation in CO(2) emissions to the atmosphere. Understanding this variation is necessary for the assessment of the contribution of these freshwater ecosystems to the global carbon cycle. This study, in contrast to previous ones, included analyses of the relationships between CO(...

In agro-ecosystems, fertilization practices are crucial for sustaining crop productivity. Here, based on a 50-year long-term experiment, we studied the influence of fertilization practices (inorganic and/or organic) and nitrogen (N) application rates on (i) soil physicochemical properties, (ii) microbial and earthworm communities and (iii) crop production. Our results showed that soil organic c...