Manure is a valuable agricultural resource, providing essential nutrients for plant growth and soil health improvement, but studies evaluating the consequences of multiple manure applications to the soil microbial community and carbon (C) cycle processes mediated by microbes remains scarce. We compared microbial communities in a 665 days-field study of corn-wheat rotation plots with or without annual composted dairy manure ame...

The ongoing climate crisis merits an urgent need to devise management approaches and new technologies to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations (GHG) in the near term. However, each year that GHG concentrations continue to rise, pressure mounts to develop and deploy atmospheric CO 2 removal pathways as a complement to, and not replacement for, emissions reductions. Soil carbon sequestration (SCS) practices in working...

Aims The theory of ecological stoichiometry mostly builds on studies of natural terrestrial ecosystems, whereas only limited stoichiometry information is available in response to agronomic practices. Methods We designed a greenhouse experiment in order to disentangle the specific role of cover crop identity and soil characteristic in affecting nutrient stoichiometry of a plant-microbe-soil system. Results Nutrient ratios of co...

Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) via organic inputs is a key strategy for increasing long‐term soil C storage and improving the climate change mitigation and adaptation potential of agricultural systems. A long‐term trial in California's Mediterranean climate revealed impacts of management on SOC in maize‐tomato and wheat–fallow cropping systems. SOC was measured at the initiation of the experiment and at year 19, at five...

The Century Experiment at the Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility at the University of California, Davis provides long‐term agroecological data from row crop systems in California's Central Valley starting in 1993. The Century Experiment was initially designed to study the effects of a gradient of water and nitrogen availability on soil properties and crop performance in ten different cropping systems to measure tra...

Aim Although patterns are emerging for macroorganisms, we have limited understanding of the factors determining soil microbial community composition and productivity at large spatial extents. The overall objective of this study was to discern the drivers of microbial community composition at the extent of biogeographical provinces and regions. We hypothesized that factors associated with land use and climate would drive soil m...

Traditional approaches to the study of food webs emphasize the transfer of local primary productivity in the form of living plant organic matter across trophic levels. However, dead organic matter, or detritus, a common feature of most ecosystems plays a frequently overlooked role as a dynamic heterogeneous resource and habitat for many species. We develop an integrative framework for understanding the impact of detritus that...

The numbers of methane‐oxidizing bacteria (methanotrophs) in the sediments of Lake Washington were estimated using three culture‐independent methods. Quantitative slot‐blot hybridizations were performed with type I and type II methanotroph‐specific probes. These data were compared to data from quantitative hybridizations using a pmoA ‐specific probe and a eubacterial probe. From the combined hybridi‐zation data, the methanotro...

Summary Methane‐oxidizing bacteria (methanotrophs) consume a significant but variable fraction of greenhouse‐active methane gas produced in wetlands and rice paddies before it can be emitted to the atmosphere. Temporal and spatial dynamics of methanotroph populations in California rice paddies were quantified using phospholipid biomarker analyses in order to evaluate the relative importance of type I and type II methanotrophs...

The gasoline additive MTBE, methyl tert ‐butyl ether, is a widespread and persistent groundwater contaminant. MTBE undergoes rapid mineralization as the sole carbon and energy source of bacterial strain PM1, isolated from an enrichment culture of compost biofilter material. In this report, we describe the results of microbial community DNA profiling to assess the relative dominance of isolate PM1 and other bacterial strains cu...