Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall -- how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by microbiologists.

The sands of the desert are an important and forgotten storehouse of carbon dioxide taken from the world’s atmosphere, scientists heard today (Wednesday 2 April 2008) at the Society for General ...

The foundation of any happy garden is the soil. In fact, some might argue that a gardener’s job isn’t to grow plants but to cultivate healthy soil. In our desert, we are lucky to have plenty of ...

Biocrusts play a crucial role in maintaining soil health and ecosystem sustainability, but they are currently under assault. Human activities including agriculture, urbanization, and off-road vehicle ...

In a new study published in New Phytologist on Nov. 23, Prof. Zeng Fanjiang's team from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and ...

Strategies deployed for the restoration of degraded land have had promising results in Brazil’s semi-arid region, improving the microbial properties of the soil and contributing to a return of native ...

A study from researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev reveals that desert soils can emit powerful greenhouse gases within minutes of being wetted—even in the absence of microbial life.

Temporal fluctuations in plant species coexistence are key to understanding ecosystem state transitions and long-term maintenance of species diversity. Although plant microbiomes can alter plant ...

Biogeochemical properties of soils play a crucial role in soil and stream chemistry throughout a watershed. How water interacts with soils during subsurface flow can have impacts on water quality, ...