Download or read book Effects of Nutrient Availability and Disturbance on the Composition and Diversity of Soil Microorganisms written by Joshua C. Thigpen and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Determining how factors such as disturbance and nutrient availability affect species diversity in a community has been a major goal of community ecology. The purpose of this study was to look at how species diversity and composition of soil bacterial communities are affected by nutrient addition and disturbance. I characterized soil microbial communities at the long-term ecological research site at the West Research Campus (WRC) located in Pitt County, NC. Briefly, DNA extracted from soils was analyzed using amplicon sequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene. The Illumina Platform was used to sequence the bacterial DNA from each sample, and the Mothur Pipeline was used to analyze the DNA sequences. I hypothesized that changes in nutrient availability and disturbance would impact soil microbial community composition and diversity through direct and indirect effects mediated by plant-soil interactions. My research complemented previous work carried out in the WRC determining the effects of nutrient addition and disturbance on plant communities. Analysis of 2013 plant data showed that mowing increased plant species richness, and fertilization decreased plant species richness significantly. The experimental treatments as well as the proximity of the blocks to a drainage ditch all had significant effects on plant community composition. Analysis of the microbial community data showed that both fertilization and mowing significantly increased mean species richness. Relative abundance microbial community composition varied significantly due to the proximity of the blocks to the ditch. Presence/absence microbial community analyses showed significant effects of the treatments, as well as ditch proximity on microbial composition differences. Also, unknown microbial communities showed significant variation of the communities due to the treatments. The results of the presence/absence analysis and the unknown microbial community analysis show the importance of rare taxa and unknown microbial communities to the differences in composition of our soil microbial communities. Analysis of the soil chemical and physical data showed very little variation due to the treatments. This study will contribute to our understanding of how both plant and soil bacterial community diversity are affected by anthropogenic nutrient addition and disturbances. Maintaining diversity is important for ecosystem stability and functioning.

Download or read book Land Use Intensification written by Saul Cunningham and published by CSIRO PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2012-07-18 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There can be little doubt that there are truly colossal challenges associated with providing food, fibre and energy for an expanding world population without further accelerating already rapid rates of biodiversity loss and undermining the ecosystem processes on which we all depend. These challenges are further complicated by rapid changes in climate and its additional direct impacts on agriculture, biodiversity and ecological processes. There are many different viewpoints about the best way to deal with the myriad issues associated with land use intensification and this book canvasses a number of these from different parts of the tropical and temperate world. Chapters focus on whether science can suggest new and improved approaches to reducing the conflict between productive land use and biodiversity conservation. Who should read this book? Policy makers in regional, state and federal governments, as well as scientists and the interested lay public.

Download or read book Searching the Soil written by Taylor J. Seitz and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The effects of global climate change are accelerated and more pronounced in northern regions, and Alaska is at the forefront of that change. Permafrost, which underlies much of the Alaskan landscape, is rapidly thawing and degrading leading to shifts in hydrology, soil chemistry, and nutrient availability. As permafrost thaws, soil microbial communities have the potential to be influenced taxonomically and functionally. However, it is unclear how active layer microbial communities, which play a role in plant-microbe interactions, are affected by increasing soil disturbance, and how soil microbiomes can influence above ground plant communities. In this study, I aimed to understand how soil microbial communities from Interior Alaska are affected by increasing disturbance, and how they in turn drive the productivity of several plants found in boreal regions. Here I used a growth experiment and found that plant productivity was affected by the disturbance level of the microbial inoculant. Plants grown in soils inoculated with microbes associated with disturbed soils demonstrated significantly decreased productivity compared to plants inoculated with microbes from undisturbed soils. Through metagenomic sequencing, I observed broad scale shifts in community membership across the gradient of soil disturbance. I then continued to characterize the microbial communities used as inoculants in the greenhouse growth experiment through 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. Microbial communities from disturbed soils were significantly more diverse than those from undisturbed soils, and the beta diversity of communities varied significantly based on the disturbance level. We found that within disturbance level community variation can be used to predict plant growth of bog blueberry, low-bush cranberry, and Labrador tea once the disturbance passes a threshold. These results suggest that as active layer microbial communities are affected by climate-driven soil disturbance, above ground plant communities may demonstrate decreased productivity, and consequently, decreased ecosystem health as the Arctic continues to warm.

Download or read book Forest and Rangeland Soils of the United States Under Changing Conditions written by Richard V. Pouyat and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book synthesizes leading-edge science and management information about forest and rangeland soils of the United States. It offers ways to better understand changing conditions and their impacts on soils, and explores directions that positively affect the future of forest and rangeland soil health. This book outlines soil processes and identifies the research needed to manage forest and rangeland soils in the United States. Chapters give an overview of the state of forest and rangeland soils research in the Nation, including multi-decadal programs (chapter 1), then summarizes various human-caused and natural impacts and their effects on soil carbon, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and biological diversity (chapters 2–5). Other chapters look at the effects of changing conditions on forest soils in wetland and urban settings (chapters 6–7). Impacts include: climate change, severe wildfires, invasive species, pests and diseases, pollution, and land use change. Chapter 8 considers approaches to maintaining or regaining forest and rangeland soil health in the face of these varied impacts. Mapping, monitoring, and data sharing are discussed in chapter 9 as ways to leverage scientific and human resources to address soil health at scales from the landscape to the individual parcel (monitoring networks, data sharing Web sites, and educational soils-centered programs are tabulated in appendix B). Chapter 10 highlights opportunities for deepening our understanding of soils and for sustaining long-term ecosystem health and appendix C summarizes research needs. Nine regional summaries (appendix A) offer a more detailed look at forest and rangeland soils in the United States and its Affiliates.

Download or read book Biogeochemistry of Wetlands written by K. Ramesh Reddy and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-09-10 with total page 926 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The globally important nature of wetland ecosystems has led to their increased protection and restoration as well as their use in engineered systems. Underpinning the beneficial functions of wetlands are a unique suite of physical, chemical, and biological processes that regulate elemental cycling in soils and the water column. This book provides an in-depth coverage of these wetland biogeochemical processes related to the cycling of macroelements including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur, secondary and trace elements, and toxic organic compounds. In this synthesis, the authors combine more than 100 years of experience studying wetlands and biogeochemistry to look inside the black box of elemental transformations in wetland ecosystems. This new edition is updated throughout to include more topics and provide an integrated view of the coupled nature of biogeochemical cycles in wetland systems. The influence of the elemental cycles is discussed at a range of scales in the context of environmental change including climate, sea level rise, and water quality. Frequent examples of key methods and major case studies are also included to help the reader extend the basic theories for application in their own system. Some of the major topics discussed are: Flooded soil and sediment characteristics Aerobic-anaerobic interfaces Redox chemistry in flooded soil and sediment systems Anaerobic microbial metabolism Plant adaptations to reducing conditions Regulators of organic matter decomposition and accretion Major nutrient sources and sinks Greenhouse gas production and emission Elemental flux processes Remediation of contaminated soils and sediments Coupled C-N-P-S processes Consequences of environmental change in wetlands# The book provides the foundation for a basic understanding of key biogeochemical processes and its applications to solve real world problems. It is detailed, but also assists the reader with box inserts, artfully designed diagrams, and summary tables all supported by numerous current references. This book is an excellent resource for senior undergraduates and graduate students studying ecosystem biogeochemistry with a focus in wetlands and aquatic systems.

Download or read book Microorganisms as Indicators of Soil Health written by Mette Neiendam Nielsen and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Environmental Gradients Drive Biogeographic Patterns in Soil Microbial Communities written by Jieyun Wu and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the central goals of the field of microbial biogeography is to better understand spatial patterns of microbial community diversity and how communities respond to gradients in environmental conditions, be they natural or anthropogenic in origin. The main aim of this thesis was to investigate how gradients in environmental conditions (i.e., across a mountain elevational gradient and across different land-use types) affect soil microbial community structure, diversity and functional traits, and to assess how these communities respond to differing environmental variables, using next-generation sequencing technologies. Elevation gradients are commonly used to explore impact climate impacts on biological communities since declines in temperature with increased elevation can generate substantial climate gradients over small spatial scales. However, inconsistent spatial patterns in soil bacterial community structure observed across elevation gradients imply that communities are affected by a variety of factors at different spatial scales. Here, I investigated the biogeography of soil bacteria across broad (i.e., a ~ 1500 m mountain elevation gradient) and fine sampling scales (i.e., both aspects of a mountain ridge) using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Across equivalent distances, variation in bacterial community composition changed more with variation in site aspect than elevation. Bacterial community composition and richness were most strongly associated with soil pH, despite the large variability in multiple soil climate variables across the site. These findings highlight the need to incorporate knowledge of multiple factors, including site aspect and soil pH for the appropriate use of elevation gradients as a proxy to explore the impacts of climate change on microbial community composition. Similar to , inconsistent elevational patterns in soil fungal community diversity suggest that these communities are driven by a complex underlying mechanism. Thus, to enhance understanding of whether distinct biogeographic patterns can be distinguished between different microorganisms and how such gradients influence the potential interactions among individual taxa, I assessed variation in the co-occurrence of different fungal taxa at different elevations along the aforementioned mountain ridge, using fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS1) DNA sequencing. Fungal community composition changed significantly along the gradient, and their co-occurrences were less frequent with increasing elevation. Such changes with elevation were associated with soil nutrient concentrations, likely driven by the relative ability of different taxa to compete for nutrients at different environmental concentrations. Evidence of nutrient-driven shifts in fungal community diversity and function in soil will enhance our understanding of underground nutrient cycling and the likely impacts of climate change and agricultural disturbance on soil microbial communities. To further explore gradients in the functional potential of soil bacterial communities along an elevation gradient, I devised a method to 'infer' metagenomics data from bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences. I evaluated the applicability of my 'inferred metagenomics' approach, by comparing bacterial community composition derived from the original bacterial data to communities derived only from the 400 taxa for which genomic information is available. The results generated from these two datasets were highly similar, suggesting that the subset of 'inferred' community was largely reflective of that of the wider environmental community. Further analysis indicates that bacteria with larger genome size appear to prevail across the elevation gradient, suggesting that microorganisms might successfully cope with harsh or various environmental conditions by retaining a larger burden of potential genes and related functions. These findings highlight the potential for using inferred genomic information, based on bacterial 16S rRNA gene data, to generate a general functional trait-based picture of microbial biogeographical patterns. Apart from studies on elevational patterns of soil microbial communities, many other environmental gradients impact distributions of bacterial communities, including gradients of anthropogenic disturbance. Therefore, I studied how pastoral land management practices affect soil bacteria, both in agricultural soils and adjacent forest fragments along 21 transects bisecting pasture-forest boundaries. Decreased compositional dispersion of bacterial communities in the grazed pasture soils resulting in a net loss of diversity caused by community homogenisation after forest-to-pasture conversion. Additionally, a greater richness of pastureonly taxa for sites with a fence on the boundary between the two land uses revealed that boundary fences play an important role in protecting the integrity of soil bacterial communities in forests surrounded by agricultural land via restricting livestock invasion. The observed variation in bacterial community richness and composition was most related to changes in soil physicochemical variables commonly associated with agricultural fertilisation. Overall, my findings demonstrate clear, and potentially detrimental, effects of agricultural disturbance on bacterial communities in forest soils adjacent to pastoral land. This thesis reports the findings of a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of different environmental gradients on soil microbial community composition and functional potential, encompassing sample data collected across different spatial scales and land use types, as well as between different microbial phylogenetic groups. These results confirm that spatial patterns in both bacterial and fungal community structure are driven by various interacting environmental variables related with natural gradients or agricultural disturbances.

Download or read book The Biology of Soil written by Richard D. Bardgett and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-02 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soil science has undergone a renaissance with increasing awareness of the importance of soil organisms and below-ground biotic interactions as drivers of community and ecosystem properties.

Download or read book Impact of Societal Development and Infrastructure on Biodiversity Decline written by Rathoure, Ashok Kumar and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are growing concerns about the decline of biodiversity due to human activities, such as infrastructure development and resource extraction. These activities, including coal mining and stream diversion, threaten ecosystems and wildlife significantly. Impact of Societal Development and Infrastructure on Biodiversity Decline is a book that examines these issues comprehensively. It provides insights into the complexities of biodiversity conservation amidst rapid societal development. This book is a timely solution for academics, researchers, and policymakers seeking to understand and mitigate the impacts of such activities on biodiversity. The book explores the ecological and biodiversity studies in coal mining areas through a detailed case studies in regions with major coal industries. It delves into the loss of biodiversity due to stream diversion, providing a thorough analysis of the ecological risks and costs involved. The book proposes mitigation measures to address these challenges, including impact assessments and an environmental management plan. Furthermore, it outlines a plantation program to restore biodiversity and ecosystem services, offering practical solutions for sustainable land use practices.

Download or read book Soil Biological Communities and Ecosystem Resilience written by Martin Lukac and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-06 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores current knowledge and methods used to study soil organisms and to attribute their activity to wider ecosystem functions. Biodiversity not only responds to environmental change, but has also been shown to be one of the key drivers of ecosystem function and service delivery. Soil biodiversity in tree-dominated ecosystems is also governed by these principles, the structure of soil biological communities is clearly determined by environmental, as well as spatial, temporal and hierarchical factors. Global environmental change, together with land-use change and ecosystem management by humans, impacts the aboveground structure and composition of tree ecosystems. Due to existing knowledge of the close links between the above- and belowground parts of terrestrial ecosystems, we know that soil biodiversity is also impacted. However, very little is known about the nature of these impacts; effects on the overall level of biodiversity, the magnitude and diversity of functions soil biodiversity generates, but also on the present and future stability of tree ecosystems and soils. Even though much remains to be learned about the relationships between soil biodiversity and tree ecosystem functionality, it is clear that better effort needs to be made to describe and understand key processes which take place in soils and are driven by soil biota.

Download or read book Handbook of Soil Acidity written by Zdenko Rengel and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2003-01-17 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the control, management and reduction of soil acidification in various agricultural systems. The text presents strategies to modify and adjust crop production processes to decrease the toxicity of soil contaminants, balance soil pH, improve nutrient uptake and increase yield.

Download or read book Plant Microbiomes for Sustainable Agriculture written by Ajar Nath Yadav and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-06 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book encompasses the current knowledge of plant microbiomes and their potential biotechnological application for plant growth, crop yield and soil health for sustainable agriculture. The plant microbiomes (rhizospheric, endophytic and epiphytic) play an important role in plant growth, development, and soil health. Plant and rhizospheric soil are a valuable natural resource harbouring hotspots of microbes, and it plays critical roles in the maintenance of global nutrient balance and ecosystem function. The diverse group of microbes is key components of soil–plant systems, where they are engaged in an intense network of interactions in the rhizosphere/endophytic/phyllospheric. The rhizospheric microbial diversity present in rhizospheric zones has a sufficient amount of nutrients release by plant root systems in form of root exudates for growth, development and activities of microbes. The endophytic microbes are referred to those microorganisms, which colonize in the interior of the plant parts, viz root, stem or seeds without causing any harmful effect on host plant. Endophytic microbes enter in host plants mainly through wounds, naturally occurring as a result of plant growth, or through root hairs and at epidermal conjunctions. Endophytes may be transmitted either vertically (directly from parent to offspring) or horizontally (among individuals). The phyllosphere is a common niche for synergism between microbes and plant. The leaf surface has been termed as phyllosphere and zone of leaves inhabited by microorganisms as phyllosphere. The plant part, especially leaves, is exposed to dust and air currents resulting in the establishments of typical flora on their surface aided by the cuticles, waxes and appendages, which help in the anchorage of microorganisms. The phyllospheric microbes may survive or proliferate on leaves depending on extent of influences of material in leaf diffuseness or exudates. The leaf diffuseness contains the principal nutrients factors (amino acids, glucose, fructose and sucrose), and such specialized habitats may provide niche for nitrogen fixation and secretions of substances capable of promoting the growth of plants. The microbes associated with plant as rhizospheric, endophytic and epiphytic with plant growth promoting (PGP) attributes have emerged as an important and promising tool for sustainable agriculture. PGP microbes promote plant growth directly or indirectly, either by releasing plant growth regulators; solubilization of phosphorus, potassium and zinc; biological nitrogen fixation or by producing siderophore, ammonia, HCN and other secondary metabolites which are antagonistic against pathogenic microbes. The PGP microbes belong to different phylum of archaea (Euryarchaeota); bacteria (Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Deinococcus-Thermus, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria) and fungi (Ascomycota and Basidiomycota), which include different genera namely Achromobacter, Arthrobacter, Aspergillus, Azospirillum, Azotobacter, Bacillus, Beijerinckia, Burkholderia, Enterobacter, Erwinia, Flavobacterium, Gluconoacetobacter, Haloarcula, Herbaspirillum, Methylobacterium, Paenibacillus, Pantoea, Penicillium, Piriformospora, Planomonospora, Pseudomonas, Rhizobium, Serratia and Streptomyces. These PGP microbes could be used as biofertilizers/bioinoculants at place of chemical fertilizers for sustainable agriculture. The aim of “Plant Microbiomes for Sustainable Agriculture” is to provide the current developments in the understanding of microbial diversity associated with plant systems in the form of rhizospheric, endophytic and epiphytic. The book is useful to scientist, research and students related to microbiology, biotechnology, agriculture, molecular biology, environmental biology and related subjects.

Download or read book Soil Protists written by Stefan Geisen and published by Sudwestdeutscher Verlag Fur Hochschulschriften AG. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Protists are by far the most diverse and abundant eukaryotes in soils. Nevertheless, very little is known about individual representatives, the diversity and community composition and ecological functioning of these important organisms. For instance, soil protists are commonly lumped into a single functional unit, i.e. bacterivores. This work tackles missing knowledge gaps on soil protists and common misconceptions using multi-methodological approaches including cultivation, microcosm experiments and environmental sequencing. In a first part, several new species and genera of amoeboid protists are described showing their immense unknown diversity. In the second part, the enormous complexity of soil protists communities is highlighted using cultivation- and sequence-based approaches. In the third part, the present of diverse mycophagous and nematophagous protists are shown in functional studies on cultivated taxa and their environmental importance supported by sequence-based approaches. This work is just a start for a promising future of soil Protistology that is likely to find other important roles of these diverse organisms.

Download or read book Soil Microbiology and Sustainable Crop Production written by Geoffrey R. Dixon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-09-08 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soils into which crop plants root and from which they obtain essential minerals and water contain huge arrays of microbes. Many have highly beneficial effects on crop growth and productivity, others are pathogens causing diseases and losses to yield and quality, a few microbes offer protection from these pathogenic forms and others have little or no effect. These intimate and often complex inter-relationships are being explored with increasing success providing exciting opportunities for increasing crop yields and quality in sustainable harmony with the populations of beneficial soil microbes and to the detriment of pathogens. This book explores current knowledge for each of these aspects of soil microbiology and indicates where future progress is most likely to aid in increasing crop productivity by means which are environmentally benign and beneficial.

Download or read book Modern Soil Microbiology Second Edition written by Jan Dirk van Elsas and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-12-21 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the ten years since the publication of Modern Soil Microbiology, the study of soil microbiology has significantly changed, both in the understanding of the diversity and function of soil microbial communities and in research methods. Ideal for students in a variety of disciplines, this second edition provides a cutting-edge examination of a fascinating discipline that encompasses ecology, physiology, genetics, molecular biology, and biotechnology, and makes use of biochemical and biophysical approaches. The chapters cover topics ranging from the fundamental to the applied and describe the use of advanced methods that have provided a great thrust to the discipline of soil microbiology. Using the latest molecular analyses, they integrate principles of soil microbiology with novel insights into the physiology of soil microorganisms. The authors discuss the soil and rhizosphere as habitats for microorganisms, then go on to describe the different microbial groups, their adaptive responses, and their respective processes in interactive and functional terms. The book highlights a range of applied aspects of soil microbiology, including the nature of disease-suppressive soils, the use of biological control agents, biopesticides and bioremediation agents, and the need for correct statistics and experimentation in the analyses of the data obtained from soil systems.

Download or read book Microbial Diversity and Functions written by D. J. Bagyaraj and published by Nipa. This book was released on 2023-07-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The object of this book is to cover comprehensively different groups of microorganisms used for sustained productivity of plants important in agriculture, horticulture and forestry.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Agrophysics written by Jan Gliński and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 1075 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Encyclopedia of Agrophysics will provide up-to-date information on the physical properties and processes affecting the quality of the environment and plant production. It will be a "first-up" volume which will nicely complement the recently published Encyclopedia of Soil Science, (November 2007) which was published in the same series. In a single authoritative volume a collection of about 250 informative articles and ca 400 glossary terms covering all aspects of agrophysics will be presented. The authors will be renowned specialists in various aspects in agrophysics from a wide variety of countries. Agrophysics is important both for research and practical use not only in agriculture, but also in areas like environmental science, land reclamation, food processing etc. Agrophysics is a relatively new interdisciplinary field closely related to Agrochemistry, Agrobiology, Agroclimatology and Agroecology. Nowadays it has been fully accepted as an agricultural and environmental discipline. As such this Encyclopedia volume will be an indispensable working tool for scientists and practitioners from different disciplines, like agriculture, soil science, geosciences, environmental science, geography, and engineering.