Ecoss Statement on Diversity, Inclusion, and Community The Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) at NAU is committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all members feel valued and inspired to contribute to the Center’s success. We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace leads to greater innovation and […]
Like a long-distance food delivery app with no apparent highway, fungi that associate with shallow-rooted shrubs in the tundra are accessing deep stores of nitrogen being released by thawing permafrost. The findings by Northern Arizona University researchers, announced this week in New Phytologist, could change scientists’ understanding of who accesses […]
Crop straw management plays important roles in sustainable agriculture and environmental protection. Straw incorporation has multiple influences on soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and crop yields, but these influences have rarely been studied simultaneously in a single cropping system. This study was conducted to examine the […]
Growth of soil microorganisms is often described as carbon limited, and adding labile carbon to soil often results in a transient and large increase in respiration. In contrast, soil microbial biomass changes little, suggesting that growth and respiration are decoupled in response to a carbon pulse. Alternatively, measuring bulk responses […]
Chinese milk vetch (Astragalus sinicus L., vetch), a leguminous winter cover crop, has been widely adopted by farmers in southern China to boost yield of the succeeding rice crop. However, the effects of vetch on rice grain yield and nitrogen (N) use efficiency have not yet been well studied in […]
Organic matter input to soils can accelerate the decomposition of native soil carbon (C), a process called the priming effect. Priming is ubiquitous and exhibits some consistent patterns, but a general explanation remains elusive, in part because of variation in the response across different ecosystems, and because of a diversity […]
Global terrestrial nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles are coupled to the global carbon (C) cycle for net primary production (NPP), plant C allocation, and decomposition of soil organic matter, but N and P have distinct pathways of inputs and losses. Current C-nutrient models exhibit large uncertainties in their estimates […]
Organisms influence ecosystems, from element cycling to disturbance regimes, to trophic interactions and to energy partitioning. Microorganisms are part of this influence, and understanding their ecology in nature requires studying the traits of these organisms quantitatively in their natural habitats—a challenging task, but one which new approaches now make possible. […]
Climate change is impacting forested ecosystems worldwide, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere where warming has increased at a faster rate than the rest of the globe. As climate warms, trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) is expected to become more successful in northern boreal forests because of its current presence in drier […]