Over the last decades, understanding of the effects of plants on soil microbiomes has greatly advanced. However, knowledge on the assembly of rhizospheric communities in aged-contaminated industrial soils is still limited, especially with regard to transcriptionally active microbiomes and their link to the quality or quantity of carbon sources. We compared the short-term (2-10 days) dynamics of...

A mixture of 1,3-dichloropropene (1,3-D) and chloropicrin (CP) (Telone C35) is an increasingly used fumigant product for pre-plant soil fumigation in California, USA. Atmospheric emissions of volatile organic compounds, including these important pesticides, is more heavily regulated in an effort to improve air-quality. Research has identified various methods of reducing fumigant emissions but e...

Mountainous regions are especially vulnerable to climate and land use change. For a monitoring of subtle changes detailed and continuous land cover information is necessary. Therefore vegetation cover fractions are derived for the Naryn river catchment in Kyrgyzstan using a remote sensing multi-scale approach. First a very high resolution QuickBird image is classified into discrete classes usin...

The present study explores the potential of directly linking phylogenetic identities obtained by cloning and sequencing of ITS sequences to dominant ribotypes of molecular community fingerprints to give further insight into dominant members of the communities in three Irish grassland soils. The ten most abundant bacterial ribotypes of untreated bare soils of three grassland microcosms were chos...

Podoconiosis is a non-infectious tropical disease caused by exposure of bare feet to irritant alkalic clay soils. This causes an asymmetrical swelling of the feet and lower limbs due to lymphoedema. This swelling is called "elephantiasis" and may lead to severe disability of the patient. It is found in areas of tropical Africa, Central and South America and north-west India, where such soils co...

Around the world, especially in semi-arid regions, millions of hectares of irrigated agricultural land are abandoned each year because of the adverse effects of irrigation, mainly secondary salinity and sodicity. Accurate information about the extent, magnitude, and spatial distribution of salinity and sodicity will help create sustainable development of agricultural resources. In Morocco, sout...

Soil respiration (Rs) is a major pathway for carbon cycling and is a complex process involving abiotic and biotic factors. Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are a key biotic component of desert ecosystems worldwide. In desert ecosystems, soils are protected from surface disturbance by BSCs, but it is unknown whether Rs is affected by disturbance of this crust layer. We measured Rs in three types of...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a major component in the global carbon cycle. Yet how input of plant litter may influence the loss of SOC through a phenomenon called priming effect remains highly uncertain. Most published results about the priming effect came from short-term investigations for a few weeks or at the most for a few months in duration. The priming effect has not been studied at the a...

shrublands (Elkins et al., 1986; Lyford and Qashu, 1969; Wainwright et al., 2000), mesquite rangelands (Wood In semiarid environments, vegetation affects surface runoff either and Blackburn, 1981), and piñon-juniper rangelands in by altering surface characteristics (e.g., surface roughness, litter absorption) or subsurface characteristics (e.g., hydraulic conductivity). the USA (Roundy et al., ...