Thirty-two chemoheterotrophic bacteria were isolated from unsaturated subsurface soil samples obtained from ca. 70 m below land surface in a high desert in southeastern Idaho. Most isolates were gram positive (84%) and strict aerobes (79%). Acridine orange direct counts of microbes in one subsurface sample showed lower numbers than similar counts performed on surface soils from the same locatio...

Published in Agron. J. 102:1521–1534 (2010) Published online 17 Aug. 2010 doi:10.2134/agronj2010.0141 Copyright © 2010 by the American Society of Agronomy, 5585 Guilford Road, Madison, WI 53711. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and ...

Semi-arid ecosystems with annual moisture inputs dominated by snowmelt cover much of the western United States, and a better understanding of their seasonal drivers of soil respiration is needed to predict consequences of climatic change on soil CO2 efflux. We assessed the relative importance of temperature, moisture, and plant phenology on soil respiration during seasonal shifts between cold, ...

Encroachment of woody plants into grasslands, and subsequent brush management, are among the most prominent changes to occur in arid and semiarid systems over the past century. Despite the resulting widespread changes in landcover, substantial uncertainty about the biogeochemical impacts of woody proliferation and brush management exists. We explored the role of shrub encroachment and brush man...

The application of an airborne electronically steered thinned array L-band radiometer (ESTAR) for soil moisture mapping was investigated over the semiarid rangeland Walnut Gulch Watershed located In southeastern Arizona. During the experiment, antecedent rainfall and evaporation were very dif ferent and resulted in a wide range of soil moisture conditions. The high spatial variability of rainfa...

Expert assessments for crop and range productivity of very-large arid and semiarid areas worldwide are ever more in demand and these studies require greater sensitivity in delineating the different grades or levels of soil salinity. In conjunction with field study in arid southeastern Oregon, we assess the merit of adding decision-tree analysis (DTA) to a commonly used remote-sensing method. Ra...