In semiarid or arid conditions, the change of root-zone soil moisture can be almost instantaneously reflected by vegetation through biophysical process. This study investigated feasibility of mapping root-zone soil moisture using MODIS-derived NDVI via statistic approach at three sites (New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas) selected from the Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN). These three sites rep...

Communities of plants, biological soil crusts (BSCs), and arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are known to influence soil stability individually, but their relative contributions, interactions, and combined effects are not well understood, particularly in arid and semiarid ecosystems. In a landscape-scale field study we quantified plant, BSC, and AM fungal communities at 216 locations along a gra...

Expected changes in precipitation over large regions of the world under global climate change will have profound effects on terrestrial ecosystems in arid and semiarid regions. To explore how changes in the amount of precipitation in the growing season would affect soil nitrogen (N) availability in a semiarid ecosystem, we established rainout shelters and irrigation systems by simulating 30% re...

BACKGROUND Mowing is a widely adopted management practice for the semiarid steppe in China and affects CH(4) exchange. However, the magnitude and the underlying mechanisms for CH(4) uptake in response to mowing remain uncertain. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In two consecutive growing seasons, we measured the effect of mowing on CH(4) uptake in a steppe community. Vegetation was mowed to 2 c...

Soil depth and texture exert strong controls on the spatial distribution of water and energy fluxes and states in semiarid watersheds. As a result, realistic representations of the spatial soil characteristics within watersheds are important for the improvement of process-based distributed hydrologic modeling applications. In this study, we evaluated the effects of combinations of soil thicknes...

Substantial tracts of land in the southwestern and western U.S. are undergoing or will require ERA. Toxicity bioassays employed in baseline ERAs are, for the most part. representative of mesic systems, and highly standardized test species (e.g., lettuce, earthworm) are generally not relevant to arid system toxicity testing. Conversely, relevant test species are often poorly characterized with r...

Nitrous oxide is an important greenhouse gas and contributes to stratospheric ozone destruction, but still little is known about emissions of this trace gas from soils in semiarid environments and how emissions are affected by irrigation. Therefore, nitrous oxide emissions from a runoff-irrigated and rainfed endosodi-calcaric Fluvisol in the semiarid northwest of Kenya were measured using the c...

During decades, in semiarid rainfed Aragon, intensive soil tillage and low crop residue input have led to the loss of soil structure and soil degradation. Conservation tillage and cropping intensification can improve soil structure in these areas. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of three different tillage systems (traditional tillage, reduced tillage and no-tillage) u...

As a primary limiting factor in arid and semiarid regions, precipitation strongly influences soil microbial properties. However, the patterns and mechanisms of soil microbial responses to precipitation have not been well documented. In this study, changes in soil microorganisms along an experimental precipitation gradient with seven levels of precipitation manipulation (i.e., ambient precipitat...

Climate changes are predicted to increase extreme rainfall events in semiarid and arid region in Northern Hemisphere. Nutrient cycles will be affected by the precipitation changes but so far only very little is known how soil N transformations may respond. Here we investigated gross soil N transformation rates and their response to simulated rainfall events across Northeast China Transect (NECT...