Aim This first global quantification of the relationship between leaf traits and soil nutrient fertility reflects the trade-off between growth and nutrient conservation. The power of soils versus climate in predicting leaf trait values is assessed in bivariate and multivariate analyses and is compared with the distribution of growth forms (as a discrete classification of vegetation) across grad...

To guide soil fertility investment programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, better understanding is needed of the relative importance of soil and crop management factors in determining smallholder crop yields and yield variability. Spatial variability in crop yields within farms is strongly influenced by variation in both current crop management (e.g. planting dates, fertilizer rates) and soil fertili...

soil samples from the jakara irrigation project site were evaluated with respect to possible degradation caused by irrigation. most of the soils were neutral to alkaline with ph values ranging between 6.58 + 0.04 and 10.45 + 0.03. the electrical conductivity ranged from 0.3 + 0.01 to 75.2 + 0.06 dsm-1 which implies low to very high salinity. the concentrations of the exchangeable cations in the...

Objective: To highlight the need and the potential for an integrated understanding of three key soil-based drivers of plant community structure and dynamics – soil fertility, soil heterogeneity, and microbes. Location: European and North American grasslands. Methods: Review and discussion of conceptual models and empirical literature, including examples of observational and manipulative studies...

Nitrogen (N)-fixing species have a function to enrich N in soil. Mixing N-fixing shrub species into poplar stands can be assumed as a measure to increase productivity while improving soil fertility. To verify this assumption and to understand the temporal influences of N-fixing shrub species mixed into poplar plantations on soil fertility, we investigated selected soil chemical and microbial pr...

This study was carried out to evaluate the capability of a combined fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method for soil fertility evaluation of common bean in Shiraz, Iran. A set of membership functions was constructed to represent the soil fertility classes, which were derived from 50 field samples collected through a purposive sampling approach. Seven soil parameters including phosphorus (...

A project of the CGIAR systemwide program on Soil, Water and Nutrient Management (SWNM), concerned with improving integrated nutrient management practices on small-scale farms in Africa, has been carried out in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda for last two years (September 1999 to September 2001). The project aims to enable small-scale farmers to profitably reverse nutrient depletion of their soils b...

About NUTNET NUTNET is a network that aims to improve the management of soil fertility in Africa. It is a partnership of fifteen organisations from six African and two European countries: About Enhancing soil fertility in Africa: from field to policy-maker (NAGREF) from Greece. It is funded by the International Cooperation for Development (INCO) programme of the European Union, which links ongo...

Prescribed fire was used in two semiarid grasslands to reduce shrub cover, promote grass production, and reduce erosional loss that represents a potential non–point-source of sediment to degrade water quality. This study measured transported soil sediment, dynamics in soil surface microtopography, cover of the woody shrub, grass, and bare ground cover classes, and soil fertility measured by nit...