One of soil microbiology's most intriguing puzzles is how so many different bacterial species can coexist in small volumes of soil when competition theory predicts that less competitive species should decline and eventually disappear. We provide evidence supporting the theory that low pore connectivity caused by low water potential (and therefore low water content) increases the diversity of a ...

[1] We studied soil properties of frost boils at nine zonal-vegetation locations across the North American Arctic Transect (NAAT) in order to better understand arctic soils and their interaction with other biogeophysical components of frost boil ecosystems. Soil genetic horizons were analyzed for particle size, pH, electrical conductivity, total organic carbon (OC) and nitrogen (N), bulk densit...

introduction: soil structural stability affects the profitability and sustainability of agricultural systems. particle size distribution (psd) and aggregate stability are the important characteristics of soil. aggregate stability has a significant impact on the development of the root system, water and carbon cycle and soil resistance against soil erosion. soil aggregate stability, defined as t...

This study investigated spatial patterns and environmental controls of aboveground biomass (AGB) in alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau by integrating AGB data collected from 135 sites during 2001– 2004 and concurrent enhanced vegetation index derived from MODIS data sets. The AGB was estimated at 68.8 gm 2, with a larger value (90.8 gm 2) in alpine meadow than in alpine steppe (50.1 gm 2)...

BACKGROUND Infiltration is a key process in determining the water balance, but so far effects of earthworms, soil texture, plant species diversity and their interaction on infiltration capacity have not been studied. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We measured infiltration capacity in subplots with ambient and reduced earthworm density nested in plots of different plant species (1, 4, and 16 s...

[1] Understanding and quantifying the long-term suspended sediment discharge of drainage basins is a key goal of geomorphology, with important implications for the study of water quality, agricultural sustainability, and the evolution of landscapes and sedimentary basins over geologic timescales. Previous studies have highlighted the importance of relief/slope, precipitation, temperature, veget...

Understanding the effects of soil intrinsic properties and extrinsic conditions on aggregate stability is essential for the development of effective soil and water conservation practices. Our objective was to evaluate the combined role of soil texture, aggregate size and application of a stabilizing agent on aggregate and structure stability indices (composite structure index [SI], the α and n ...

Abstract This paper presents a quantitative account of vegetation–environmental factor relationships in arid rangelands. Vegetation cover was recorded using Braun-Blanquet combined abundance-cover scale in each quadrat. Within each quadrat, one profile was dug and soil samples being taken at 0-20cm and 20-100cm depths. Under study physical-chemical characteristics included texture, lime, orga...

Texture analysis holds significant promise for improving the science return of remote planetary exploration. Communications with exploration spacecraft suffer significant latency and bandwidth constraints; onboard image understanding can summarize large datasets and select representative images for transmission. We present image texture descriptors that satisfy the strict computational requirem...