Summary Protists are abundant and play key trophic functions in soil. Documenting how their trophic contributions vary across large environmental gradients is essential to understand and predict how biogeochemical cycles will be impacted by global changes. Here, using amplicon sequencing of environmental DNA in open habitat soil from 161 locations spanning 2600 m of elevation in the Swiss Alps (from 400 to 3000 m), we found th...

In the coming decades, larger genetic gains in yield will be necessary to meet projected demand, and this must be achieved despite the destabilizing impacts of climate change on crop production. The root systems of crops capture the water and nutrients needed to support crop growth, and improved root systems tailored to the challenges of specific agricultural environments could improve climate resiliency. Each component of roo...

Assessing the degree to which climate explains the spatial distributions of different taxonomic and functional groups is essential for anticipating the effects of climate change on ecosystems. Most effort so far has focused on above‐ground organisms, which offer only a partial view on the response of biodiversity to environmental gradients. Here including both above‐ and below‐ground organisms, we quantified the degree of topo...

Aim To investigate the potential of a large range of soil variables to improve topo‐climatic models of plant species distributions in a temperate mountain region encompassing complex relief. Location The western Swiss Alps. Methods Fitting topo‐climatic models for >60 plant species across >250 sites with and without added soil predictor variables (>30). Testing included the following: (a) which soil variables improve plant spe...

Aim Trends in spatial patterns of diversity in macroscopic organisms can be well predicted from correlative models, using topo‐climatic variables for plants and animals allowing inference over large scales. By contrast, diversity in soil microorganisms is generally considered as mostly driven by edaphic variables and, therefore, difficult to extrapolate on a large spatial scale based on predictive models. Here, we compared the...

2Over the past several decades, federal incentive programs have encouraged the restoration of bottomland forests throughout the West Gulf Coastal Plain (WGCP) and the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV). Programs such as the Conservation Reserve (CRP) and Wetlands Reserve (WRP) Programs have been marginally successful (Stanturf et al. 2001). Foresters and contractors often follow conventional tree planting procedures that...