Download or read book Grassland Management and Diversity Effects on Soil Nitrogen Dynamics and Losses written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grasslands play an important role in land use, covering one third of the agriculturally utilized landscape in Europe. As a consequence of management intensification in the last 60 years, the productivity of grasslands increased and the diversity of these systems decreased. Nitrogen (N) plays a key role in these ecosystems - it limits primary productivity and affects biodiversity. Increasing N supply may alter nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitric oxide (NO) emissions, which play a major role in atmospheric chemistry and contribute to global warming. Nitrate (NO3-) leaching from soils can be a thre...
Download or read book Effects of Grassland Management Intensification on Dynamics of Soil Organic Carbon and Nitrogen in Temperate Grassland Soils written by Anja Marie Nüsse and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Optimisation of nutrient cycling and soil quality for sustainable grasslands written by S.C. Jarvis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-08-28 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together two aspects of grassland soil management which, by and large, have hitherto been considered separately. Issues related to nutrient cycling and soil quality have dominated research directed towards aiding broad and local scale policy issues for improving land use. Protecting the environment and maintaining/preserving natural habitats and biodiversity, tend to be considered separately. In this book we attempt to bring what are, in reality, inseparable aspects of grassland soil characteristics together and consider physical, chemical and biological components of soils, their interrelations and the way that they influence nutrient transformations and flows and soil quality. Keynote discussions will be lead by the following experts: Physical constraints and drivers: Professor Iain Young, Abertay University, Scotland Biological aspects: Professor Tim Seastedt, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA Chemical aspects: Dr Mike Beare from Crop and Food, Research, Lincoln New Zealand Over-arching synopsis of these issues: Professor Richard Bardgett, Lancaster University, UK. Bringing together international expertise and experience does much to progress understanding and points ways forward to maintain what is a base resource, our soils, whether it be for production targets, environmental benefit or for maintenance of natural ecosystems for future generations. This volume is useful to all those interested in soils and their function, and all grassland managers, whether their aims are directed at producing food, forage or fibre of sustainable quantity and quality or at maintaining, restoring or encouraging above and below ground biodiversity. The international perspective on this is very important so that experiences in wide ranging circumstances can be cross-referenced and used to the advantage of all.
Download or read book Grassland Productivity and Ecosystem Services written by Gilles Lemaire and published by CABI. This book was released on 2011 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grassland ecosystems are deeply affected by human activities and need appropriate management to optimise trade-offs between ecosystem functions and services. Until now they have mainly been analysed as agro-ecosystems for animal production but this book looks beyond the role of grassland as a feeding ground, and evaluates other important processes such as carbon sequestration in soils, greenhouse gas regulation and biodiversity protection. This authoritative volume expertly highlights the need for an immediate balance between agriculture and ecological management for sustainability in the futu.
Download or read book Grassland Responses to Global Change written by Evan Elliot Batzer and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent history of the Earth's biosphere -- the Anthropocene -- is characterized by human activity. Increasingly, industrialization, land use change, fossil fuel combustion, and other drivers have altered key biological processes that govern the composition and function of natural communities. Among the two most impactful stressors are increased concentrations of limiting soil nutrients and shifting patterns of temperature and precipitation through climate change. Grasslands, like many plant ecosystems, are highly sensitive to these changes. Their widespread distribution and importance to both conservation and human enterprise underscores the need to understand how these global changes operate in grassland systems. However, climate change and nutrient deposition are known to produce complex effects on plant community structure; to effectively predict vegetation change, studies must integrate across multiple stressors, mechanisms, and scales of interest. This dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of these complexities through a synthesis of large-scale experimentation and novel statistical methodology. Chapter 1 uses data from a global experimental cooperative -- the Nutrient Network -- to test contrasting hypotheses about compositional change driven by soil nutrient enrichment. While traditional perspectives on resource competition suggest that nutrient enrichment controls plant species abundances through increasing limitation by light, experimental evidence indicates that other mechanisms related to trade-offs in the use of specific soil resources may also be an important driver. Across 49 experimental sites, there was strong support for a "neutral" model, where plants respond similarly to the increased availability of soil nitrogen, phosphorous, or potassium. However, I also find that responses to treatments were more varied in sites characterized by higher average productivity and pre-treatment light limitation. Together, these findings indicate that grassland responses to fertilization tend to be driven by a trade-off between belowground and aboveground resource use, yet the predictability of these effects will depend on the inherent productivity and community structure of a given site. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on California grasslands. Chapter 2 explores the effects of nitrogen enrichment on plant community diversity at multiple scales of organization, highlighting how shifts in community structure and distribution shape observed diversity loss at different sampling areas. Most nutrient addition studies have utilized small-scale plots (1m2), though it has been shown that the area sampled can have significant impacts on the direction or magnitude of observed results. While a few studies have demonstrated scale-dependence in effects on species richness, I expand upon these findings by relating effects across scales to impacts on total community richness, community evenness, and spatial organization of vegetation. I find that nitrogen enrichment rarely produces large-scale species extirpation, but effects on evenness are nearly constant across sampling areas. While large-scale coexistence processes may facilitate species persistence at large spatial extents, fertilization also prompts increases in individual spatial aggregation, which may produce species extirpation in the long term. In Chapter 3, I evaluate changes in California grassland community composition in response to interannual variation in temperature and precipitation. In Mediterranean systems, the quantity and timing of rainfall is hypothesized to control turnover between distinct species groups. A key challenge to the evaluation of these species-climate relationships, however, is historical contingency in vegetation composition - non-independence between species abundances in a given year and the year previous, caused by local seed pools, plant-soil feedbacks, and other priority effects. To quantify how climate and prior community composition interact, I employ a novel application of multi-state modeling to a long-term dataset. This approach expands on traditional methods, which qualitatively describe variation among a priori species groups, to directly quantify the number of discrete vegetation states within a system and the probability of transition between them. When applied to ten years of community observation across a range of climatic conditions, this method produced a revised partitioning of vegetation states: one "classic" species group was split into two separate states based on performance under extreme drought. In turn, climate patterns interacted with the emergent properties of each vegetation state to control which community types were most likely to dominate. Invasive species, for example, were unlikely to persist under drought; yet low precipitation only tended to favor vegetation transitions to a native dominated state when these species were previously seeded. It is increasingly understood that integration across interacting sets of processes is needed to effectively understand the effects of global change on the diversity and composition of plant communities. Together, these three chapters highlight how local environmental characteristics, the scale of observation, and prior vegetation type combine to structure grassland responses to environmental changes. In doing so, my work contributes to a more complete understanding of ecological dynamics that is needed to better conserve and manage ecosystems in a rapidly changing world.
Download or read book Grassland Management for Sustainable Agroecosystems written by Abad Chabbi and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a remarkable work that brings together the most recent international research on grassland management, covering a broad range of topics and geographical areas. The different contributions explore the complex relationships between landscape, climate features, and soil fertility with the support of observational data and modeling. Clearly, this is a wide and multifaceted area of research that opens up new prospects for the management of a biome, which should no longer be considered only as a feed resource for domestic herbivore farming, but also—and above all—as a source of ecosystem services to society and a contributor to the sustainability of agriculture. Textbooks like this positively demonstrate the importance and significance of how grassland science, when viewed in this way, can make tangible the progress in understanding the complexity of grassland management and its current and future challenges.
Download or read book Handbook of Soil Analysis written by Marc Pansu and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-04-18 with total page 996 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook is a reference guide for selecting and carrying out numerous methods of soil analysis. It is written in accordance with analytical standards and quality control approaches. It covers a large body of technical information including protocols, tables, formulae, spectrum models, chromatograms and additional analytical diagrams. The approaches are diverse, from the simplest tests to the most sophisticated determination methods.
Download or read book Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function written by Ernst-Detlef Schulze and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biota of the earth is being altered at an unprecedented rate. We are witnessing wholesale exchanges of organisms among geographic areas that were once totally biologically isolated. We are seeing massive changes in landscape use that are creating even more abundant succes sional patches, reductions in population sizes, and in the worst cases, losses of species. There are many reasons for concern about these trends. One is that we unfortunately do not know in detail the conse quences of these massive alterations in terms of how the biosphere as a whole operates or even, for that matter, the functioning of localized ecosystems. We do know that the biosphere interacts strongly with the atmospheric composition, contributing to potential climate change. We also know that changes in vegetative cover greatly influence the hydrology and biochemistry ofa site or region. Our knowledge is weak in important details, however. How are the many services that ecosystems provide to humanity altered by modifications of ecosystem composition? Stated in another way, what is the role of individual species in ecosystem function? We are observing the selective as well as wholesale alteration in the composition of ecosystems. Do these alterations matter in respect to how ecosystems operate and provide services? This book represents the initial probing of this central ques tion. It will be followed by other volumes in this series examining in depth the functional role of biodiversity in various ecosystems of the world.
Download or read book Grassland Invertebrate Interactions Plant Productivity Resilience and Community Dynamics written by Ivan Hiltpold and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2017-10-13 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural and anthropogenic grasslands such as prairies, meadows, rangelands, and pastures cover more than 40% of the planet’s surface and provide a wealth of ecological services. Grasslands alone store one third of the global carbon stocks and grass roots, through their specific architectures, ensure water cycling and prevent the erosion of fertile topsoil. In addition, grasslands are of vital importance for human food production as vast areas of rangelands and pastures provide feed for livestock. Pastoral legumes mobilize atmospheric nitrogen and improve fertility of arable soils. Not least, grasslands are an essential genetic resource. The three major crop species that feed half of the global population have been bred from wild grasses. Ancestors of our contemporary turf cultivars, common components of urban landscapes and recreation spaces, originated from wild grasslands. Although natural and managed grasslands represent pivotal ecosystems, many aspects of how they function are poorly understood. To date, most attention has focused on grassland primary producers (i.e. forage plants) and mammalian grazers but invertebrates are likely to play an equally, if not more important role in grassland ecosystem functioning. In Australian pastures, for example, the biomass of root-feeding scarab beetles can often exceed that of sheep and plant damage caused by invertebrates is sometimes equivalent to an average dairy cow’s grass consumption. Indeed, grasslands are one of the most densely populated ecosystems with invertebrates being probably the most important engineers that shape both plant communities and the grassland as a whole. In a rapidly changing world with increasing anthropogenic pressure on grasslands, this Research Topic focuses on: 1. How grassland habitats shape invertebrate biodiversity 2. Impacts of climate change on grassland-invertebrate interactions 3. Plant and invertebrate pest monitoring and management 4. Plant-mediated multitrophic interactions and biological control in grasslands 5. Land use and grassland invertebrates 6. Plant resistance to invertebrate pests Given the increasing demand for food and land for human habitation, unprecedented threats to grasslands are anticipated. Resilient to some extent, these key ecosystems need to be better comprehended to guarantee their sustainable management and ecosystem services.
Download or read book Save Soil by Managing Soil Nutrient Losses Agronomic Practices and Crop Microbial Interaction World Soil Day 2022 written by Arnab Majumdar and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2024-02-07 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soil is not only a fundamental source for all living organisms but also impacts non-living factors (water, air, minerals, etc.) making it an invaluable and finite resource. The importance of soil expands from agronomy through to industrialization, thus, it is crucial to understand the impact of human activity on soil quality. To address several global issues related to pollution, food security, and health, the United Nations promotes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with targets to ‘save soil’ by minimizing nutrient loss and pollution load from the soil. Due to increasing anthropogenic pollution load, many soil pollution control measures are failing, therefore, new technologies and eco-friendly solutions are needed to balance and restore soil health. Soil-crop interactions are essential considering the crop yield and productivity under different soil statuses. These processes, including nutrient release or soi detoxification, are mediated by soil-inhabiting microbes. In fact, the intrinsic role of soil parameters, including the different classes of soil, control soil microbiota which in turn modulate soil nutrient contents and makes these bioavailable. Different crops, especially cereals, are constantly interacting with these soil microbes, thus the relationship between soil, crops, and microbes is complex.
Download or read book Effects of Ageing and Cultivation of Grassland on Soil Nitrogen written by Gerard L. Velthof and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Grassland Productivity and Ecosystem Services written by Gilles Lemaire and published by CABI. This book was released on 2011 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains 28 chapters with emphasis on the interactive nature of the relationships between the soil, plant, animal and environmental components of grassland systems, both natural and managed. It analyses the present knowledge and the future trends of research for combining the classical view of grasslands, as a resource for secure feeding of an increasing human population, with the more recent perspective of the contribution of grasslands to the mitigation of environmental impacts and biodiversity erosion as consequences of human society activities. The chapters are organized within five sections dealing with the different functions and the main ecosystem services expected from grasslands: (i) domestic herbivore feeding and animal production; (ii) the regulation of biogeochemical cycles and its consequences for the environment; (iii) dynamics of biodiversity hosted by grasslands; (iv) integration of grasslands within sustainable animal production systems; and (v) interactions of grassland areas with other land use systems at the landscape level.
Download or read book Grassland Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics written by Wylie Harris and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plant production and soil microbial biomass (SMB) in grassland ecosystems are linked by flows of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) between the two groups of organisms. In native mixed grasslands of the southern Great Plains, these cycles are strongly influenced by climate. They may also be modulated by the timing and intensity of disturbances such as fire and clipping. We assessed the relative influence of climate and disturbance on plant community and soil C and N dynamics. Combined effects of fire and clipping were assessed in a 2x3 factorial design including spring fire and light clipping or continuous clipping. Seasonal fire effects were evaluated in a one-way analysis incorporating spring and fall fire in unclipped plots. Plant cover and biomass (by functional type), litter mass, SMB C and N, soil density fraction concentration and composition, soil organic C, total N, and inorganic N, soil temperature and moisture, soil respiration, and net N mineralization were measured at monthly intervals. C4 grasses were unaffected by fire or clipping, probably as a result of summer drought in both study years. Clipping reduced cover of C3 annual grasses but increased that of C3 perennials, resulting in no net change in C3 grass biomass. Fire did not affect C3 grass cover or biomass. Both fire and clipping reduced litter mass. This was reflected in seasonal declines in SMB C in fire treatments, suggesting that the primary input of microbial C in this ecosystem occurs by decomposition of current-season plant litter. Litter removal offers a single mechanism by which fire-induced increases in soil temperature and reductions in light soil density fraction concentration, soil moisture, and net N mineralization rates may be explained. Lack of treatment effects on soil respiration rates suggest that plant roots represent an important component of the plant-soil C cycle, not quantified in this research. Overall, treatment effects were relatively minor compared to seasonal climate-related changes in response variables, particularly in light of repeated summer drought.
Download or read book Soil Management and Climate Change written by Maria Angeles Munoz and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soil Management and Climate Change: Effects on Organic Carbon, Nitrogen Dynamics, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions provides a state of the art overview of recent findings and future research challenges regarding physical, chemical and biological processes controlling soil carbon, nitrogen dynamic and greenhouse gas emissions from soils. This book is for students and academics in soil science and environmental science, land managers, public administrators and legislators, and will increase understanding of organic matter preservation in soil and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Given the central role soil plays on the global carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions, there is an urgent need to increase our common understanding about sources, mechanisms and processes that regulate organic matter mineralization and stabilization, and to identify those management practices and processes which mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, helping increase organic matter stabilization with suitable supplies of available N. - Provides the latest findings about soil organic matter stabilization and greenhouse gas emissions - Covers the effect of practices and management on soil organic matter stabilization - Includes information for readers to select the most suitable management practices to increase soil organic matter stabilization
Download or read book Agroecosystem Diversity written by Gilles Lemaire and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agro-Ecosystem Diversity: Impact on Food Security and Environmental Quality presents cutting-edge exploration of developing novel farming systems and introduces landscape ecology to agronomy. It encompasses the broad range of links between agricultural development and ecological impact and how to limit the potential negative results. Presented in seven sections, each focusing on a specific challenge to sustaining diversity, the book provides insights toward the argument that by re-introducing diversity, it should be possible to maintain a high level of productivity of agro-ecosystems while also maintaining and/or restoring a satisfactory level of environment quality and biodiversity. Demonstrates that diversified agro-ecosystems can be intensified with environmental quality preserved, restored and enhanced Includes analysis of economic constraints leading to specialization of farms and regions and the social locking forces resisting to diversification of agro-ecosystems Presents a global vision of world agriculture and the tradeoff between a necessary increase in food production and restoring environment quality
Download or read book California Grasslands written by Mark R. Stromberg and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-12-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This highly synthetic and scholarly work brings together new and important scientific contributions by leading experts on a rich diversity of topics concerning the history, ecology, and conservation of California's endangered grasslands. The editors and authors have succeeded admirably in drawing from a great wealth of recent research to produce a widely accessible and compelling, state-of-the-art treatment of this fascinating subject. Anyone interested in Californian biodiversity or grassland ecosystems in general will find this book to be an invaluable resource and a major inspiration for further research, management, and restoration efforts."—Bruce G. Baldwin, W. L. Jepson Professor and Curator, UC Berkeley "Grasses and grasslands are among the most important elements of the California landscape. This is their book, embodying the kind of integrated view needed for all ecological communities in California. Approaches ranging across an incredibly broad spectrum -- paleontology and human history; basic science and practical management techniques; systematics, community ecology, physiology, and genetics; physical factors such as water, soil nutrients, atmospherics, and fire; biological factors such as competition, symbiosis, and grazing -- are nicely tied together due to careful editorial work. This is an indispensable reference for everyone interested in the California environment."—Brent Mishler, Director of the University & Jepson Herbaria and Professor of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley "The structure and function of California grasslands have intrigued ecologists for decades. The editors of this volume have assembled a comprehensive set of reviews by a group of outstanding authors on the natural history, structure, management, and restoration of this economically and ecologically important ecosystem."—Scott L. Collins, Professor of Biology, University of New Mexico
Download or read book The Architecture and Biology of Soils written by Karl Ritz and published by CABI. This book was released on 2011 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soil is a fundamental and critical component of terrestrial ecosystems, but one that is often overlooked. It is an extremely complex environment, both in terms of its physical structure and in that it supports levels of biodiversity far greater than those found above ground in any ecosystem. Bringing together existing knowledge across many areas of soil biology and physics, this book develops the concept of soil architecture and explores key characteristics of the remarkable `inner space' of the soil. The authors consider how such structure develops through time and the consequences this has for life underground. They also explore the interactions between the biological and physical components of the soil and how they relate to its many functions, in order to demonstrate the key role of soil architecture in underpinning ecosystem dynamics. The diverse but richly interrelated perspectives offered in this book make it an essential resource for researchers and students in soil and environmental sciences, terrestrial ecology, plant sciences and microbiology.
