Agricultural soils play a dual role in regulating the Earth's climate by releasing or sequestering carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in soil organic carbon (SOC) and emitting non‐CO 2 greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and methane (CH 4 ). To understand how agricultural soils can play a role in climate solutions requires a comprehensive assessment of net soil GHG balance (i.e., sum of SOC‐sequestered CO 2 and non‐CO 2...

Main conclusion By combining hyperspectral signatures of peanut and soybean, we predicted V cmax and J max with 70 and 50% accuracy. The PLS was the model that better predicted these photosynthetic parameters. Abstract One proposed key strategy for increasing potential crop stability and yield centers on exploitation of genotypic variability in photosynthetic capacity through precise high-throughput phenotyping techniques. Pho...

Summary An evolution experiment with the bacterial plant pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum revealed that several adaptive mutations conferring enhanced fitness in plants arose in the efpR gene encoding a regulator of virulence and metabolic functions. In this study, we found that an efpR mutant systematically displays colonies with two morphotypes: the type S (‘smooth’, similar to the wild type) and the type EV (‘ efpR variant’)...

Landscape fire is a key but poorly understood component of the global carbon cycle. Predicting biomass consumption by fire at large spatial scales is essential to understanding carbon dynamics and hence how fire management can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase ecosystem carbon storage. An Australia‐wide field‐based survey (at 113 locations) across large‐scale macroecological gradients (climate, productivity and fire...

Aims To detect changes in area and vegetation dynamics of monsoon rain forests in relation to disturbance and an observed wetting trend. Location The Mitchell Plateau and the Bougainville Peninsula (north Kimberley, Australia). Methods Geo‐rectified aerial photographs acquired in 1949 and 1969 and a pre‐existing map from 2005 were used to detect changes in rain forest boundaries. To ground‐truth rain forest expansion, we estab...

Aims To (1) identify the trade‐offs among flammability attributes within grass and litter fuel types; (2) determine how flammability attributes of grass and litter fuels vary across macro‐ecological gradients; and (3) test our hypothesis that inherent flammability attributes of grass and litter fuels scale to satellite‐derived proxies for fire frequency and intensity. Location Continent of Australia. Methods Samples of litter...

Forests that regenerate exclusively from seed following high‐severity fire are particularly vulnerable to local extinction if fire frequency leaves insufficient time for regenerating plants to reach sexual maturity. We evaluate the relative importance of extrinsic (such as fire weather and climate cycles) and intrinsic (such as proneness to fire due to stand age and structural development) factors in driving the decline of obl...