Monitoring exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP) and sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) variability in soils is both time-consuming and expensive. However, in order to estimate the amounts of amendments and land management, it is essential to know ESP and SAR variations and values in sodic or saline and sodic soils. Thus, presenting a method which uses easily obtained indices to estimate ESP and SAR indirectly is more optimal and economical. Input data of the current research were 189 soil samples collected based on a regular networking approach from Miankangi region, Sistan plain, Iran.

Globally, peatlands are regarded as important carbon stores and their conservation essential for ensuring continuation of terrestrial carbon storage. Numerous peatlands in particular regions of Europe have been degraded by drainage, burning, extraction, overgrazing and pollution in recent decades, often leading to erosion, loss of peat mass and a loss of a variety of flora. In the UK, some 90% of peatlands can be regarded as degraded.

CONTEXT: An increase in the incidence of large wildfires worldwide has prompted concerns about the resilience of forest ecosystems, particularly in the western U.S., where recent changes are linked with climate warming and 20th-century land management practices. OBJECTIVES: To study forest resilience to recent wildfires, we examined relationships among fire legacies, landscape features, ecological conditions, and patterns of post-fire conifer regeneration. METHODS: We quantified regeneration across 182 sites in 21 recent large fires in dry mixed-conifer forests of the U.S.

Following western settlement, fire was suppressed directly and indirectly by Euro-American land management practices. Currently, reintroduction of fire into sagebrush steppe systems may be desirable, but long-term fire effects are not well-known. In this 15-year study we used a generalized linear mixed modeling approach to analyze the response of native and invasive grass species to fire in an Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis (Wyoming big sagebrush) community in north-central Oregon, United States.

One challenge in the effort to conserve biodiversity is identifying where to prioritize resources for active land management. Cost–benefit analyses have been used successfully as a conservation tool to identify sites that provide the greatest conservation benefit per unit cost. Our goal was to apply cost–benefit analysis to the question of how to prioritize land management efforts, in our case the application of prescribed fire to natural landscapes in Wisconsin, USA.

Monitoring the crop yield is one of the key factors to define agricultural land management strategies. Recent developments in spatial information technologies enabled cost and energy saving in crop yield prediction. The aim of this paper was to predict yield of the three major crops and yield loss under soil salinity effect which is one of the most important limitation in many Mediterranean countries. Crop yields were estimated using vegetation indices and Stepwise Linear Regression (SLR) derived from Landsat (Thematic Mapper and Enhanced Thematic Mapper) TM/ETM satellite images.

Reports of positive or neutral effects of grazing on plant species richness have prompted calls for livestock grazing to be used as a tool for managing land for conservation. Grazing effects, however, are likely to vary among different response variables, types, and intensity of grazing, and across abiotic conditions. We aimed to examine how grazing affects ecosystem structure, function, and composition. We compiled a database of 7615 records reporting an effect of grazing by sheep and cattle on 278 biotic and abiotic response variables for published studies across Australia.

Regional analysis of large wildfire potential given climate change scenarios is crucial to understanding areas most at risk in the future, yet wildfire models are not often developed and tested at this spatial scale. We fit three historical climate suitability models for large wildfires (i.e. ≥ 400 ha) in Colorado and Wyoming using topography and decadal climate averages corresponding to wildfire occurrence at the same temporal scale. The historical models classified points of known large wildfire occurrence with high accuracies.

A recently developed fluvial erosion model for blanket peatlands, PESERA-PEAT, was applied at ten sites across Great Britain to predict the response of blanket peat erosion to environmental change. Climate change to 2099 was derived from seven UKCP09 future projections and the UK Met Office’s historical dataset. Land management scenarios were established based on outputs from earlier published investigations. Modelling results suggested that as climate changes, the response of blanket peat erosion will be spatially very variable across Great Britain.

The intensification of agricultural practices contributes to the decline of many taxa such as insects and wild plants. Weeds are serious competitors for crop production and are thus controlled. Nonetheless, weeds enhance floral diversity in agricultural landscapes. Weeds provide food for insects in exchange for pollination. The stability of mutualistic interactions in pollination networks depends on conservation of insect pollinator and weed communities. Some agricultural practices can destabilize interactions and thus modify the stability of pollination networks.

Soil and climatic conditions as well as land cover and land management have been shown to strongly impact the structure and diversity of the soil bacterial communities. Here, we addressed under a same land cover the potential effect of the edaphic parameters on the soil bacterial communities, excluding potential confounding factors as climate. To do this, we characterized two natural soil sequences occurring in the Montiers experimental site.

Restoring biological soil crusts (biocrusts) in degraded drylands can contribute to recovery of ecosystem functions that have global implications, including erosion resistance and nutrient cycling. To examine techniques for restoring biocrusts, we conducted a replicated, factorial experiment on recently abandoned road surfaces by applying biocrust inoculation (salvaged and stored dry for two years), salvaged topsoil, an abiotic soil amendment (wood shavings), and planting of a dominant perennial shrub (Ambrosia dumosa).