Plants and soil microbes show parallel patterns of species-level diversity. Diverse plant communities release a wider range of organics that are consumed by more microbial species. We speculated, however, that diversity metrics accounting for the evolutionary distance across community members would reveal opposing patterns between plant and soil bacterial phylogenetic diversity. Plant phylogene...

Nutrient dynamics in the Bela watershed, Nepal were examined using a range of GIS budget modelling and field analysis techniques. The fertility status analysis showed that soil acidity, phosphorus availability, and lack of base cations were the key soil fertility issues. Nutrient budget calculations revealed significant annual phosphorus deficits for maize rota­ tions, but only minor deficits i...

Soil temperature, soil moisture and soil fertility were determined empirically at 63 predominantly hill sites in the South Island, New Zealand. Soil temperatures were measured at a depth of 0.5 m in four seasons and gave a standard deviation of mean annual temperature between sites of 2.2 °C. Soil moisture levels, as available water in a 0-0.5 m profile, measured seasonally, gave a standard dev...

In forest ecosystems, a change of soil nitrogen (N) cycling after disturbance is regulated by various factors. Sasa dwarf bamboo (hereafter referred to as Sasa) is an understory plant that grows thickly on the forest floor in northern Hokkaido, Japan. However, the ecosystem function of Sasa after disturbances in the soil N cycling is not fully understood. The purpose of this study was to determ...

This research sought to link Andean soil knowledge and farmer categorization of soil fertility to soil science characterization of soils, and use these to understand the impacts of phosphorus (P) fertilization of legumes using rock phosphate and soluble P fertilizer in 17 smallholder-managed sites with varying soil properties. We found that farmer high/low categorization of soils corresponded t...

The Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are used to provide more accurate decisions to the decision makers in order to evaluate the effective factors in the natural science. One of the popular algorithm of multicriteria analysis is Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA). The OWA procedure depends on some parameters, which can be 15 specified by means of f...

Several reasons contributed to the low success of early trials, including varieties that were not adapted to the soils, climatic conditions and photoperiod of the region. Most of the trials were carried out in the Delta, where the night temperatures were too low for the varieties used. In additions, the Delta soils were very fertile, while the varieties tested were bred to produce an adequate y...

Despite limitations of low fertility and high acidity of the soils, the cerrado flora is the richest amongst savannas. Many cerrado woody species show sclerophyllous leaves, which might be related to the availability of water and nutrients in the soil. To better understand the function and structure of cerrado vegetation within its own variations, we compared two cerrado communities: one in its...

Mechanical hill direct seeding of hybrid rice could be the way to solve the problems of high seeding rates and uneven plant establishment now faced in direct seeded rice; however, it is not clear what the optimum hill seeding density should be for high-yielding hybrid rice in the single-season rice production system. Experiments were conducted in 2010 and 2011 to determine the effects of hill s...