Search results for " Ecosystem"
showing 10 items of 633 documents
Are Cover Crops Affecting the Quality and Sustainability of Fruit Production?
2021
The study of the interaction between fruit trees and cover crops has been addressed in numerous works over the last 50 years or more, evidencing the need to evolve from a productive orchard to an orchard that plays different ecosystem roles in terms of environmental sustainability rather than just productivity. This review, through an analysis of the scientific literature since the 1950s, highlights the development of sustainable soil management models in fruit tree orchards, mostly considering the relationship with fruit quality traits and with the ecosystem services that result from the adoption of cover crops, aiming at identifying and formulating technical recommendations in perennial o…
Ecosystem services provided by marine and freshwater phytoplankton
2021
AbstractPhytoplankton, the ecological group of microalgae adapted to live in apparent suspension in water masses, is much more than an ecosystem’s engineer. In this opinion paper, we use our experience as phytoplankton ecologists to list and highlight the services provided by phytoplankton, trying to demonstrate how their activity is fundamental to regulate and sustain Life on our Planet. Although the number of services produced by phytoplankton can be considered less numerous than that produced by other photosynthetic organisms, the ubiquity of this group of organisms, and their thriving across oceanic ecosystems make it one of the biological engines moving our biosphere. Supporting servic…
Near Real-Time Modelling of Regional Scale Soil Erosion Using AVHRR and METEOSAT Data: A Tool for Monitoring the Impact of Sediment Yield on the Biod…
2005
List of Contributors. Preface. 1. Spatial Modelling of the Terrestrial Environment: The Coupling of Remote Sensing with Spatial Models (Richard E.J. Kelly, Nicholas A. Drake and Stuart L. Barr). PART I: HYDROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS. Editorial: Spatial Modelling in Hydrology (Richard E.J. Kelly). 2. Modelling Ice Sheet Dynamics with the Aid of Satellite Derived Topography (Jonathan L. Bamber). 3. Using Remote Sensing and Spatial Models to Monitor Snow Depth and Snow Water Equivalent (Richard E. J. Kelly, Alfred T. C. Chang, James L. Foster and Dorothy K. Hall). 4. Using Coupled Land Surface and Microwave Emission Models to Address Issues in Satellite--Based Estimates of Soil Moisture (Eleanor J…
Intertidal epilithic bacteria diversity changes along a naturally occurring carbon dioxide and pH gradient.
2014
Intertidal epilithic bacteria communities are important components of coastal ecosystems, yet few studies have assessed their diversity and how it may be affected by changing environmental parameters. Submarine CO2 seeps produce localised areas of CO2-enriched seawater with reduced pH levels. We utilised the seawater pH/CO2 gradient at Levante Bay (Italy) to test the hypothesis that epilithic bacteria communities are modified by exposure to seawater with the varying chemical parameters. Biofilms were sampled from three sites exposed to seawater with different pH/CO2 levels and diversity determined using high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes. Seawater pCO2 concentrations were increase…
Key roles for freshwater A ctinobacteria revealed by deep metagenomic sequencing
2014
Freshwater ecosystems are critical but fragile environments directly affecting society and its welfare. However, our understanding of genuinely freshwater microbial communities, constrained by our capacity to manipulate its prokaryotic participants in axenic cultures, remains very rudimentary. Even the most abundant components, freshwater Actinobacteria, remain largely unknown. Here, applying deep metagenomic sequencing to the microbial community of a freshwater reservoir, we were able to circumvent this traditional bottleneck and reconstruct de novo seven distinct streamlined actinobacterial genomes. These genomes represent three new groups of photoheterotrophic, planktonic Actinobacteria.…
Vulnerability of the North Water ecosystem to climate change
2021
High Arctic ecosystems and Indigenous livelihoods are tightly linked and exposed to climate change, yet assessing their sensitivity requires a long-term perspective. Here, we assess the vulnerability of the North Water polynya, a unique seaice ecosystem that sustains the world’s northernmost Inuit communities and several keystone Arctic species. We reconstruct mid-to-late Holocene changes in sea ice, marine primary production, and little auk colony dynamics through multi-proxy analysis of marine and lake sediment cores. Our results suggest a productive ecosystem by 4400–4200 cal yrs b2k coincident with the arrival of the first humans in Greenland. Climate forcing during the late Holocene, l…
Integrating Decomposers, Methane-Cycling Microbes and Ecosystem Carbon Fluxes Along a Peatland Successional Gradient in a Land Uplift Region
2021
AbstractPeatlands are carbon dioxide (CO2) sinks that, in parallel, release methane (CH4). The peatland carbon (C) balance depends on the interplay of decomposer and CH4-cycling microbes, vegetation, and environmental conditions. These interactions are susceptible to the changes that occur along a successional gradient from vascular plant-dominated systems to Sphagnum moss-dominated systems. Changes similar to this succession are predicted to occur from climate change. Here, we investigated how microbial and plant communities are interlinked with each other and with ecosystem C cycling along a successional gradient on a boreal land uplift coast. The gradient ranged from shoreline to meadows…
Ecohydrology in Mediterranean areas: a numerical model to describe growing seasons out of phase with precipitations
2008
The probabilistic description of soil moisture dynamics is a relatively new topic in hydrology. The most common ecohydrological models start from a stochastic differential equation describing the soil water balance, where the unknown quantity, the soil moisture, depends both on spaces and time. Most of the solutions existing in literature are obtained in a probabilistic framework and under steady-state condition; even if this last condition allows the analytical handling of the problem, it has considerably simplified the same problem by subtracting generalities from it. <br><br> The steady-state hypothesis, appears perfectly applicable in arid and semiarid climatic areas like th…
The ABCflux database: Arctic-Boreal CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; flux observations and ancillary information aggregated to monthly time…
2021
Abstract. Past efforts to synthesize and quantify the magnitude and change in carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems across the rapidly warming Arctic-Boreal Zone (ABZ) have provided valuable information, but were limited in their geographical and temporal coverage. Furthermore, these efforts have been based on data aggregated over varying time periods, often with only minimal site ancillary data, thus limiting their potential to be used in large-scale carbon budget assessments. To bridge these gaps, we developed a standardized monthly database of Arctic-Boreal CO2 fluxes (ABCflux) that aggregates in-situ measurements of terrestrial net ecosystem CO2 exchange and its derived …
A review of the Entocytheridae (Ostracoda) of the world: updated bibliographic and species checklists and global georeferenced database, with insight…
2014
The creation of biodiversity datasets freely available for the scientific community is a valuable task to stimulate global research on biodiversity. Among others, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is a remarkable resource providing free online access to biodiversity data on many diverse taxonomic groups (including Ostracoda) from both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. More specific databases for Ostracoda georeferenced data have been built (e.g., NACODe and OMEGA), some with freely available data. However, the Entocytheridae, a family of ostracods living commensal on other crustaceans, with 220 living species, representing the third non-marine ostracod family in number of…