The carbon cycle in salt pans is complex and poorly understood. Field-based data are needed to improve regional estimates of C storage and land–atmosphere CO2 fluxes from dryland environments where pans are prevalent. This paper provides a first estimate of C stores and CO2 efflux within the salt pan, grassland and woodland …
No abstract available.
The Kalahari of southern Africa is characterised by sparse vegetation interspersed with biological soil crusts which deliver a range of ecosystem services including soil stabilisation and carbon fixation. The crusts vary in morphology from barely aggregated sand grains, to strongly aggregated thick crusts with dark pigmentation. Crust morphology and development …
Soil pore and particle matrices both facilitate and constrain soil-atmosphere exchange of heat, moisture and gas. Further, in soils covered by Biological Soil Crusts (BSCs), soil structure differs in the BSC (<1cm) and near surface layers. Soil-atmosphere gas exchange occurs primarily by diffusion, moisture flow by capillarity and hydrostatic pressure, …
Polluted aquifers contain indigenous microbial communities with the potential for in situ bioremediation. However, the effect of hydrogeochemical gradients on in situ microbial communities (especially at the plume fringe, where natural attenuation is higher) is still not clear. In this study, we used culture-independent techniques to investigate the diversity of …
La fragmentación del hábitat es uno de los principales motores de cambio global en los ecosistemas Mediterráneos (MEA, 2005). La magnitud de las perturbaciones asociadas a la fragmentación a menudo se relaciona con el tamaño del fragmento (Lindenmayer y Fisher, 2006). La disponibilidad de agua es un factor limitante en …
No abstract available.
Impacts of degraded blanket bog restoration on culturable and non-culturable soil bacterial and fungal biodiversity and spatiality were assessed. Peat sampled from unvegetated peat areas and from 3 restored vegetation classes, remnant vegetation and grass dominated gullies were subjected to culturable microbial enumeration and rDNA based community profiling and pyrosequencing. …
Diversity and functioning of soil microbial drivers in peatland ecosystems remain poorly investigated. We report on culture-dependent and -independent characterisation of soil bacterial and fungal communities and primary geospatial relationships identified in bare peat and vegetation mosaics that have resulted from active restoration of degraded peatland in the southern Pennines.
Highlights Development of a novel technology for partial nitrification at ambient temperature. First time to use online NH4-–N measurement as a control parameter for bioreactors. RT-PCR analysis shows the population size of AOB was up to 10% of total bacteria. Intermittent aeration and oxygen-limited conditions sustained partial nitrification. The bioreactor …