Nitrous oxide (N2O) is the predominant ozone-depleting substance and contributes approximately 6% to overall global warming. Terrestrial ecosystems account for nearly 70% of total global N2O atmospheric loading, of which at least 45% can be attributed to microbial cycling of nitrogen in agriculture. The reduction of N2O to nitrogen gas by microorganisms is critical for mitigating its emissions from terrestrial ecosystems, yet the determinants of a soil’s capacity to act as a source or sink for N2O remain uncertain4.

Solutions to meet growing food requirements in a world of limited suitable land and degrading environment focus mainly on increasing crop yields, particularly in poorly performing regions, and reducing animal product consumption. Increasing yields could alleviate land requirements, but imposing higher soil nutrient withdrawals and in most cases larger fertilizer inputs.

Bridging the gap between the predictions of coarse-scale climate models and the fine-scale climatic reality of species is a key issue of climate change biology research. While it is now well known that most organisms do not experience the climatic conditions recorded at weather stations, there is little information on the discrepancies between microclimates and global interpolated temperatures used in species distribution models, and their consequences for organisms’ performance.

Mine drainage is an important environmental disturbance that affects the chemical and biological components in natural resources. However, little is known about the effects of neutral mine drainage on the soil bacteria community. Here, a high-throughput 16S rDNA pyrosequencing approach was used to evaluate differences in composition, structure, and diversity of bacteria communities in samples from a neutral drainage channel, and soil next to the channel, at the Sossego copper mine in Brazil.

Climate models predict a range of changes in tropical forest regions, including increased average temperatures, decreased total precipitation, reduced soil moisture and alterations in seasonal climate variations. These changes are directly related to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, primarily CO2. Assessing seasonal forest growth responses to climate is of utmost importance because woody tissues, produced by photosynthesis from atmospheric CO2, water and light, constitute the main component of carbon sequestration in the forest ecosystem.

This study emphasizes the importance of rainstorm events in mobilizing carbon at the soil-stream interface from tropical rainforests. Half-hourly geochemical/isotopic records over a 13.5 h period from a 20 km tropical rainforest headwater in Guyana show an order of magnitude increase in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration in less than 30 mins (10.6–114 mg/L). The composition of DOC varies significantly and includes optically invisible dissolved organic matter (iDOM) that accounts for a large proportion (4–89%) of the total DOC, quantified using size exclusion chromatography (SEC).

A study was undertaken in the established benchmark soil series in different agro-ecological sub-regions of Black Soil Regions of India with the objective to assess the urease activity as a function of soil depth, bio-climate, cropping system and land use type. The urease activity declined with increase in soil depth. Maximum activity was restricted within 0–30 cm of soil depth. Cropping systems and bio-climates significantly (p sub-humid (dry) > semi-arid (dry) > arid. The activity in different cropping systems was in decreasing order viz.