After decades of research, we are starting to understand more about why the number of species varies from place to place on the planet. However, little is known about spatial variation in abundance, especially for soil-dwelling organisms. In this study, we aimed to disentangle the relative influences of climatic factors, soil properties, and plant diversity on the abundance of soil-dwelling inv...

The responses of soil respiration to environmental conditions have been studied extensively in various ecosystems. However, little is known about the impacts of temperature and moisture on soils respiration under biological soil crusts. In this study, CO2 efflux from biologically-crusted soils was measured continuously with an automated chamber system in Ningxia, northwest China, from June to O...

A thorough understanding of thermal soil regimes is critical information for a wide variety of disciplines and engineering applications as well as for the evaluation of potential and limitations of thermal and optical sensors. In this study we have developed a procedure for the evaluation of global thermal soil regimes. First, pedotransfer functions are used to derive thermal soil properties (v...

The response of resistant soil organic matter to temperature change is crucial for predicting climate change impacts on C cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the response of the decomposition of different soil organic carbon (SOC) fractions to temperature is still under debate. To investigate whether the labile and resistant SOC components have different temperature sensitivities, soil ...

Seasonal changes over 2 years (2004–2006) in soil moisture content ( v) of frozen alpine frost meadow soils of the QinghaiTibet plateau permafrost region under three different levels of vegetation cover were investigated. Vegetation cover and air temperature changes had significant effects (synergistic effect) on v and its distribution in the soil profile. During periods of soil freezing or tha...

We studied the effects of soil temperature (8 °C and 15 °C) on barley growth, barley phosphorus (P) uptake and soil P solubility. Barley was grown in a pot experiment in two soils with different P fertilization histories for 22 years. The availability of P was estimated by using 33P-labeled fertilizer and calculating L-values. After cultivation for 22 years at ambient soil temperature without P...

Thermal adaptations of soil microorganisms could mitigate or facilitate global warming effects on soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition and soil CO2 efflux. We incubated soil from warmed and control subplots of a forest soil warming experiment to assess whether 9 years of soil warming affected the rates and the temperature sensitivity of the soil CO2 efflux, extracellular enzyme activities, m...

Five-year-old Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) seedlings were subjected to three simulated growing seasons in controlled environment chambers. Plants were acclimated to a soil temperature of 16 degrees C during the first and third growing seasons, but were allocated at random to soil temperature treatments of 9, 13, 18 and 21 degrees C during the second growing season. Low soil temperatu...

We developed a soil temperature model to predict hourly temperatures at the litter-soil interface and at soil depths of 0.10 m, 0.20 m, and 1.25 m in hardwood forest stands with closed canopies. The model, which was written in BASIC on a microcomputer, uses a numerical solution for the partial differential heat-flow equation. Litter-soil interface temperature was predicted from air temperature ...

Reliable agronomic and fibre quality data generated in Upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) cultivar performance trials are highly valuable. The most common strategy used to generate reliable performance trial data uses experimental design to minimize experimental error resulting from spatial variability. However, an alternative strategy uses a posteriori statistical procedures to account for ...