Transition of Ethiopian highland forests to agriculture-dominated landscapes shifts the soil microbial community composition

Abstract Background Land use changes and related land management practices significantly alter soil physicochemical properties; however, their effects on the soil microbial community structure are still unclear. In this study, we used automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis to determine the fungal and bacterial community composition in soils from different land use areas in the Ethiopian highlands. Soil samples were collected from five areas with different land uses, natural forest, eucalyptus plantation, exclosure, grassland and cropland, which had all historically been natural forest. Results Our results showed a significant shift in the soil bacterial and fungal community composition in response to land use change. We also identified soil physicochemical factors corresponding to the changes in bacterial and fungal communities. Although most soil attributes, including soil organic carbon, total soil nitrogen, labile P, soil pH and soil aggregate stability, were related to the change in bacterial community composition, the total soil nitrogen and soil organic carbon had the strongest relationships. The change in fungal community composition was correlated with soil nutrients, organic carbon, soil nitrogen and particularly the labile P concentration. Conclusions The fungal community composition was likely affected by the alteration of vegetation cover in response to land use change, whereas the bacterial communities were mainly sensitive to changes in soil attributes. The study highlights the higher sensitivity of fungal communities than bacterial communities to land use changes

Pore size effects on physicochemical properties of Fe-Co/K-Al2O3 catalysts and their catalytic activity in CO2 hydrogenation to light olefins

In this work, the hydrogenation of CO2 to light olefins has been studied over the Fe-Co/K-Al2 O3 catalysts, while focusing on the impact by the pore sizes of Al2 O3 supports including 6.2 nm (S-Al2 3 ), 49.7 nm (M-Al2 O3 ) and 152.3 nm (L-Al2 O3 ) on the structure and catalytic performance. The characterization results demonstrate that the pore sizes of the Al2 O3 supports play a vital role on the crystallite size of Fe2 O3 , the reducibility of Fe2 O3 and the adsorption-desorption of CO2 and H2 . The catalyst with the smallest pore size (CS-Al2 O3 ) allows the formation of a small Fe2 O3 crystallite size due to pore confinement effects, yielding a low active component (Fe) after reduction at 400 °C for 5 h. The catalysts with the larger pore sizes of 49.7 nm (CM-Al2 O3 ) and 152.3 nm (CL-Al2 O3 ) provide the larger Fe2 O3 crystallite sizes which require a longer reduction time for enhancing degree of reduction, resulting in a high metallic Fe content, leading to a high CO2 conversion and a high selectivity toward hydrocarbon. Eliminating diffusion limitation by increasing the pore sizes of Al2 O3 supports can suppress the hydrogenation of olefins to paraffins and thus the largest pore catalyst (CL-Al2 O3 ) gives the highest olefins to paraffins ratio of 6.82. Nevertheless, the CL-Al2 O3 also favors the formation of C5+ hydrocarbon. Therefore, the highest light olefins yield (14.38%) is achieved over the catalyst with appropriated pore size (CM-Al2 O3 )