23 research outputs found
Analysis of winter wheat yield components depending upon the system of tillage in conditions of early sowing
No-till in northern, western and south-western Europe: A review of problems and opportunities for crop production and the environment
Productivity of winter wheat Turnia and Rysa cultivars sown in pure and mixed stand depending on tillage systems
Nitrogen balance and irrigation water productivity for corn, sorghum and durum wheat under direct seeding into mulch when compared with conventional tillage in the southeastern France
Heavy-Machinery Traffic Impacts Methane Emissions as Well as Methanogen Abundance and Community Structure in Oxic Forest Soils▿†
Temperate forest soils are usually efficient sinks for the greenhouse gas methane, at least in the absence of significant amounts of methanogens. We demonstrate here that trafficking with heavy harvesting machines caused a large reduction in CH4 consumption and even turned well-aerated forest soils into net methane sources. In addition to studying methane fluxes, we investigated the responses of methanogens after trafficking in two different forest sites. Trafficking generated wheel tracks with different impact (low, moderate, severe, and unaffected). We found that machine passes decreased the soils' macropore space and lowered hydraulic conductivities in wheel tracks. Severely compacted soils yielded high methanogenic abundance, as demonstrated by quantitative PCR analyses of methyl coenzyme M reductase (mcrA) genes, whereas these sequences were undetectable in unaffected soils. Even after a year after traffic compression, methanogen abundance in compacted soils did not decline, indicating a stability of methanogens here over time. Compacted wheel tracks exhibited a relatively constant community structure, since we found several persisting mcrA sequence types continuously present at all sampling times. Phylogenetic analysis revealed a rather large methanogen diversity in the compacted soil, and most mcrA gene sequences were mostly similar to known sequences from wetlands. The majority of mcrA gene sequences belonged either to the order Methanosarcinales or Methanomicrobiales, whereas both sites were dominated by members of the families Methanomicrobiaceae Fencluster, with similar sequences obtained from peatland environments. The results show that compacting wet forest soils by heavy machinery causes increases in methane production and release