Filters: Tags: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg (X) > Types: Journal Citation (X)
49 results (39ms)
Filters
Date Range
Extensions Types Contacts Categories |
The episodic nature of water availability in arid and semiarid ecosystems has significant consequences on belowground carbon and nutrient cycling. Pulsed water events directly control belowground processes through soil wet-dry cycles. Rapid soil microbial response to incident moisture availability often results in almost instantaneous C and N mineralization, followed by shifts in C/N of microbially available substrate, and an offset in the balance between nutrient immobilization and mineralization. Nitrogen inputs from biological soil crusts are also highly sensitive to pulsed rain events, and nitrogen losses, particularly gaseous losses due to denitrification and nitrate leaching, are tightly linked to pulses of...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: Oecologia,
Springer Berlin / Heidelberg,
biogeochemical cycles,
carbon cycling,
nitrogen mineralization,
Few studies have experimentally tested the resource dispersion hypothesis (RDH). In this study, I tested whether space use and social organization of Gunnison?s prairie dog responded to changes in the dispersion and abundance of resources. Food manipulations were carried out during the reproductive and nonreproductive seasons across 2 years. Gunnison?s prairie dog adults responded to the experiments by decreasing territory size as food became patchier in space and time. Both males and females modified their home ranges, with no detectable difference between sexes, either prior to or during the experiments. As food became patchier in space and time, the spatial overlap of adults increased, whereas it decreased as...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology,
Cynomys gunnisoni,
Springer Berlin / Heidelberg,
group living,
resource dispersion,
Few studies have experimentally tested the resource dispersion hypothesis (RDH). In this study, I tested whether space use and social organization of Gunnison?s prairie dog responded to changes in the dispersion and abundance of resources. Food manipulations were carried out during the reproductive and nonreproductive seasons across 2 years. Gunnison?s prairie dog adults responded to the experiments by decreasing territory size as food became patchier in space and time. Both males and females modified their home ranges, with no detectable difference between sexes, either prior to or during the experiments. As food became patchier in space and time, the spatial overlap of adults increased, whereas it decreased as...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology,
Cynomys gunnisoni,
Springer Berlin / Heidelberg,
group living,
resource dispersion,
The significance of soil water redistribution facilitated by roots (an extension of "hydraulic lift", here termed hydraulic redistribution) was assessed for a stand of Artemisia tridentata using measurements and a simulation model. The model incorporated water movement within the soil via unsaturated flow and hydraulic redistribution and soil water loss from transpiration. The model used Buckingham-Darcy's law for unsaturated flow while hydraulic redistribution was developed as a function of the distribution of active roots, root conductance for water, and relative soil-root (rhizosphere) conductance for water. Simulations were conducted to compare model predictions with time courses of soil water potential at several...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: Artemisia tridentata,
Hydraulic lift/redistribution,
Oecologia,
Root distributio,
Soil?water model,
Irrigation and rain-out shelters were used to simulate precipitation patterns of wet and dry years in the northern Chihuahuan Desert. Irrigation provided approximately double the long-term average monthly precipitation. Rain was excluded during the wet season, July-October, to simulate a dry year. N net mineralization in laboratory incubations was undectable at calculated water potentials less than -1 MPa. Witb increasing moisture, mineralization gradually rose to the highest observed rates near field capacity. There was no mineralization maximum at moisture contents below field capacity. Irrigation significantly increased the water potential and rainfall exclusion reduced water potentials to less than-8 MPa. The...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: Analysis of covariance,
Biology and Fertility of Soils,
Chihuahan Desert,
Field capacity,
Larrea tridentata,
In water-limited environments of the intermountain region of North America, summer precipitation may play a role in the structure and function of aridland communities and ecosystems. This study examined the potential reliance on summer precipitation of two widespread, coexisting woody species in the southwestern United States, Pinus edulis Englmn. (Colorado pi�on) and Juniperus osteosperma (Torr) Little (Utah juniper). The current distributions of P. edulis and J. osteosperma are highly suggestive of different dependencies on summer rainfall. We hypothesized that P. edulis was dependent on summer precipitation, utilizing summer precipitation even during extremely dry summers, whereas J. osteosperma was not dependent,...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: Juniperus osteosperma,
Oecologia,
Pinus edulis,
Springer Berlin / Heidelberg,
Summer precipitation,
Eight perennial C-4 grasses from the Jornada del Muerto Basin in southern New Mexico show five-fold differences in relative growth rates under well- watered conditions (RGRmax). In a controlled environment, we tested the hypothesis that there is an inverse relationship (trade-off) between RGRmax and the capacity of these species to tolerate drought. We examined both physiological (gas exchange) and morphological (biomass allocation, leaf properties) determinants of growth for these eight species under three steady-state drought treatments (none=control, moderate, and severe). When well watered, the grasses exhibited a large interspecific variation in growth, which was reflected in order-of-magnitude biomass differences...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: C-4 photosynthesis,
Chihuahuan Desert,
Oecologia,
Relative growth rate,
Springer Berlin / Heidelberg,
Some unicellular N(2)-fixing cyanobacteria have recently been found to lack a functional photosystem II of photosynthesis. Such organisms, provisionally termed UCYN-A, of the oceanic picoplanktion are major contributors to the global marine N-input by N(2)-fixation. Since their photosystem II is inactive, they can perform N(2)-fixation during the day. UCYN-A organisms cannot be cultivated as yet. Their genomic analysis indicates that they lack genes coding for enzymes of the Calvin cycle, the tricarboxylic acid cycle and for the biosynthesis of several amino acids. The carbon source in the ocean that allows them to thrive in such high abundance has not been identified. Their genomic analysis implies that they metabolize...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: Archives of Microbiology,
Chlamydobotrys,
Marine nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria,
Rhopalodia gibba,
Spheroid bodies of diatoms,
Ring-shaped growth patterns commonly occur in resource-limited arid and semi-arid environments. The spatial distribution, geometry, and scale of vegetation growth patterns result from interactions between biotic and abiotic processes, and, in turn, affect the spatial patterns of soil moisture, sediment transport, and nutrient dynamics in aridland ecosystems. Even though grass ring patterns are observed worldwide, a comprehensive understanding of the biotic and abiotic processes that lead to the formation, growth and breakup of these rings is still lacking. Our studies on patterns of infiltration and soil properties of blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) grass rings in the northern Chihuahuan desert indicate that ring...
Categories: Publication;
Types: Citation,
Journal Citation;
Tags: Aeolian processes,
Arid ecosystems,
Ecohydrology,
Infiltration,
Oecologia,
|
|