Soil microbial respiration is a central process in the terrestrial carbon (C) cycle. In this study, I tested the effect of the carbon-to-nitrogen (C : N) ratio of soil litter layers on microbial respiration in absolute terms and per unit microbial biomass C. For this purpose, a global data set on microbial respiration per unit microbial biomass C – termed the metabolic quotient (qCO2) – was com...

Cadmium (Cd) is ubiquitous in the human environment and has toxic effect on soil microbial biomass or its activity, including microbial biomass carbon (C(mic)), dehydrogenase activity (DHA) and basal respiration (BR), etc., C(mic), DHA, BR were used as bioindicators of the toxic effect of Cd in soil. This study was conducted to determine the effects of Cd on soil microbial biomass and its activ...

Experiments with potted plants and removed understories have indicated that understory vegetation often affects the chemical and microbial properties of soil. In this study, we examined the mechanism and extent of the influence of understory vegetation on the chemical and microbial properties of soil in plantation forests. The relationships between the vegetational structure (diversity for diff...

Decomposition of litter mixtures generally cannot be predicted from the component species incubated in isolation. Therefore, such non-additive effects of litter mixing on soil C and N dynamics remain poorly understood in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, litters of Mongolian pine and three dominant understory species and soil were collected from a Mongolian pine plantation in Northeast Chi...

Anthropogenic changes in biodiversity and atmospheric temperature significantly influence ecosystem processes. However, little is known about potential interactive effects of plant diversity and warming on essential ecosystem properties, such as soil microbial functions and element cycling. We studied the effects of orthogonal manipulations of plant diversity (one, four, and 16 species) and war...

The purpose of this paper is to describe the effects of C02 and N treatments on soil pC02, calculated CO2 efflux, root biomass and soil carbon in open-top chambers planted with Pinus ponderosa seedlings. Based upon the literature, it was hypothesized that both elevated CO2 and N would cause increased root biomass which would in turn cause increases in both total soil CO2 efflux and microbial re...

Article history: Received 5 October 2015 Received in revised form 17 October 2016 Accepted 21 October 2016 Available online 28 October 2016 Elevated CO2 and drought are key consequences of climate change and affect soil processes and plant growth. This study investigated the effects of elevated CO2 and drought on themicrobial biomass and enzymatic activities in the rhizospheres of Bothriochloa ...

Cadmium has a toxic effect on soil microbial activity which plays an important role in nutrient cycling and, therefore, in maintaining soil fertility. In addition, the mobility of this heavy metal in soil is affected by the addition of urban wastes such as sewage sludge. This study was conducted to determine the effect of sewage sludge amendment of a semiarid soil, previously polluted with Cd, ...

land use change of forest ecosystems in northern iran changes the soil quality of paresar (gilan province) and gorgan (gorgan province) regions. in order to study changes in some biological soil quality indices due to land use change from forest to cultivated lands, composite soil samples from two depths (0-20 and 20-40 cm) were taken from paresar and gorgan regions and urease, alkaline and aci...

Little information is available on the seasonal response of soil microbial biomass to climate warming even though it is very sensitive to climate change. A two-year field experiment was conducted in the subalpine and alpine forests of the eastern Tibetan Plateau, China. The intact soil cores from 3,600 m site were incubated in three elevations (3,000 m, 3,300 m and 3,600 m) to simulate climate ...