Search results for "ecosystem"
showing 10 items of 1752 documents
Key Biochemical Attributes to Assess Soil Ecosystem Sustainability
2011
Soil is not a renewable resource, at least within the human timescale. In general, any anthropic exploitation of soils tends to disturb or divert them from a more “natural” development which, by definition, represents the best comparison term for measuring the relative shift from soil sustainability. The continuous degradation of soil health and quality due to abuse of land potentiality or intensive management occurs since decades. Soil microbiota, being ‘the biological engine of the Earth’, provides pivotal services in the soil ecosystem functioning. Hence, management practices protecting soil microbial diversity and resilience, should be pursued. Besides, any abnormal change in rate of in…
Links Between Soil Security and the Influence of Soil on Human Health
2017
Soil is important to human health because of (1) food availability and quality, (2) human contact with various chemicals in soil, (3) human contact with soil organisms, and (4) disposal of wastes. The five dimensions of soil security each have ties to soils and their influence on human health. Capability is related to the ability of soils to produce adequate and high-quality food and filter waste products to provide a clean environment, particularly clean, safe water supplies. Condition influences the nutritional quality of agricultural products produced in a given soil. Capital recognizes that there is value to the services soil provides in promoting human health, costs when soil constitue…
Connecting the public with soil to improve human health
2019
Despite the definite links between soil and human health, it is likely that most people do not think about soil when considering human health. There is a disconnect between most people in our modern society and soil, and when people notice soil it is often in a negative context. People care for things that matter to them, and creating a more positive public image of soil could improve human health by leading to better treatment and understanding of the soil resource. There are a number of concepts that may be able to connect people to the soil, including terroir, soil health and soil security. While terroir originally established a connection between those who appreciate wine and the soils …
Agriculture and grazing environments
2019
Abstract The increase in world population increases the pressure on soil resources and triggers land degradation. Agricultural and grazing environments are one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to this process. Degradation affects importantly soil fertility. Millions of hectares are affected and soil productivity is endangered. This decreases soil ability to provide ecosystem services in quantity and quality. Managers and decision-makers should be open to adopt environmentally-friendly practices and contribute to land degradation neutrality. This chapter focuses on the problems induced by some of the most common soil degradation processes caused by in agriculture and grazing activities. Rev…
The dynamics of soil bacterial community structure in response to yearly repeated agricultural copper treatments
2008
International audience; The annual dynamics of soil bacterial community structure, including early, dose-dependent and transient modifications, was observed consecutively at different levels of copper contamination (high: 48 kg Cu ha−1, low: 16 kg Cu ha−1) repeated yearly over a three-year field experiment. Repeated low-level Cu contamination led to an increase in community stability to metal stress without a long-term shift in the population structure, whereas repeated high-level Cu contamination induced a novel and stable bacterial community structure. Furthermore, field experimentation highlighted that episodic climatic stress can modulate copper impact by enhancing community stability.
Short-term changes in soil Munsell colour value, organic matter content and soil water repellency after a spring grassland fire in Lithuania
2014
Abstract. Fire is a natural phenomenon with important implications on soil properties. The degree of this impact depends upon fire severity, the ecosystem affected, topography of the burned area and post-fire meteorological conditions. The study of fire effects on soil properties is fundamental to understand the impacts of this disturbance on ecosystems. The aim of this work was to study the short-term effects immediately after the fire (IAF), 2, 5, 7 and 9 months after a low-severity spring boreal grassland fire on soil colour value (assessed with the Munsell colour chart), soil organic matter content (SOM) and soil water repellency (SWR) in Lithuania. Four days after the fire a 400 m2 plo…
Comparing biological classifications of freshwater phytoplankton: a case study from South China
2012
The use of ecological classification systems is becoming more and more widely used when studying phytoplankton. Grouping phytoplankton species into ecologically coherent groups allow to reduce redundancy and in this way, to handle a minor number of biological variables when investigating the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems. Three ecological classifications are mostly used when freshwater phytoplankton is studied: functional groups or coda, morpho-functional groups (MFGs) and morphology-based functional groups (MBFGs). In this study, these three ecological classifications were comparatively used along with two taxonomic classifications based on species and genera to analyse phytoplan…
Morphological Similarity and Ecological Overlap in Two Rotifer Species
2013
Co-occurrence of cryptic species raises theoretically relevant questions regarding their coexistence and ecological similarity. Given their great morphological similitude and close phylogenetic relationship (i.e., niche retention), these species will have similar ecological requirements and are expected to have strong competitive interactions. This raises the problem of finding the mechanisms that may explain the coexistence of cryptic species and challenges the conventional view of coexistence based on niche differentiation. The cryptic species complex of the rotifer Brachionus plicatilis is an excellent model to study these questions and to test hypotheses regarding ecological differentia…
Long-Term Coexistence of Rotifer Cryptic Species
2011
Despite their high morphological similarity, cryptic species often coexist in aquatic habitats presenting a challenge in the framework of niche differentiation theory and coexistence mechanisms. Here we use a rotifer species complex inhabiting highly unpredictable and fluctuating salt lakes to gain insights into the mechanisms involved in stable coexistence in cryptic species. We combined molecular barcoding surveys of planktonic populations and paleogenetic analysis of diapausing eggs to reconstruct the current and historical coexistence dynamics of two highly morphologically similar rotifer species, B. plicatilis and B. manjavacas. In addition, we carried out laboratory experiments using …
Body size variability across habitats in the Brachionus plicatilis cryptic species complex
2020
AbstractThe body size response to temperature is one of the most recognizable but still poorly understood ecological phenomena. Other covarying environmental factors are frequently invoked as either affecting the strength of that response or even driving this pattern. We tested the body size response in five species representing the Brachionus plicatilis cryptic species complex, inhabiting 10 brackish ponds with different environmental characteristics. Principal Component Analysis selected salinity and oxygen concentration as the most important factors, while temperature and pH were less influential in explaining variation of limnological parameters. Path analysis showed a positive interclo…