Taking the adjacent 18-year-old pure Pinus massoniana pure forest (I), P. massoniana, Liquidamber fomosana, and Schima superba mixed forest (II), S. superba pure forest (III), L. fomosana (IV) pure forest, and natural restoration fallow land (CK) in Taihe County of Jiangxi Province as test sites, a comparative study was made on their soil soluble organic carbon (SOC) and nitrogen (SON), soil microbial biomass C (MBC) and N (MBN), and soil urease and asparaginase activities. In 0-10 cm soil layer, the pool sizes of SOC, SON, MBC, and MBN at test sites ranged in 354-1007 mg x kg(-1), 24-73 mg x kg(-1), 203-488 mg x kg(-1), and 24-65 mg x kg(-1), and the soil urease and asparaginase activities were 95-133 mg x kg(-1) x d(-1) and 58-113 mg x kg(-1) x d(-1), respectively. There were significant differences in the pool sizes of SOC, SON, MBC, and MBN and the asparaginase activity among the test sites, but no significant difference was observed in the urease activity. The pool sizes of SOC and SON were in the order of IV > CK > III > I > II, those of MBC and MBN were in the order of CK > IV > III > I > II, and asparaginase activity followed the order of IV > CK > III > II > I. With the increase of soil depth, the pool sizes of SOC, SON, MBC, and MBN and the activities of soil asparaginase and urease decreased. In 0-20 cm soil layer, the SOC, SON, MBC, MBN, total C, and total N were highly correlated with each other, soil asparaginase activity was highly correlated with SOC, SON, TSN, total C, total N, MBC, and MBN, and soil urease activity was highly correlated with SON, TSN, total C, MBC and MBN.

Arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) is one of the most widely distributed and the most important mutualistic symbionts in terrestrial ecosystems, playing a significant role in enhancing plant resistance to stresses, remediating polluted environments, and maintaining ecosystem stabilization and sustainable productivity. The structural characteristics of AM are the main indicators determining the mycorrhizal formation in root system, and have close relations to the mycorrhizal functions. This paper summarized the structural characteristics of arbuscules, vesicles, mycelia and invasion points of AM, and analyzed the relationships between the Arum (A) type arbuscules, Paris (P) type arbuscules, vesicles, and external mycelia and their functions in improving plant nutrient acquisition and growth, enhancing plant resistance to drought, waterlogging, salinity, high temperature, diseases, heavy metals toxicity, and promoting toxic organic substances decomposition and polluted and degraded soil remediation. The factors affecting the AM structure and functions as well as the action mechanisms of mycorrhizal functions were also discussed. This review would provide a basis for the systemic study of AM structural characteristics and functional mechanisms and for evaluating and screening efficient AM fungal species.

Population parameter estimation and spatial distribution pattern are the main issues in animal ecology and conservation biology. In recent decades, camera trap as a non-invasive technique in field survey has been widely used in wildlife ecology and conservation research, and showed its great superiority under the conditions of traditional survey methods difficult to achieve. The animal presence data collected by camera trap can provide extremely valuable quantitative information on wildlife populations. In this review, the operational principles of camera trap were introduced to provide an intuitive understanding of this technique, and then, the applications of this technique in two main fields of population ecology, i. e. , population density and abundance estimation and spatial occupancy estimation for the species with or without natural unique individual markings, were discussed, with special attention to the logic of development, assumptions, limits in application, challenges, and future directions of model development. Finally, the important aspects which should be kept in mind when using camera trap in estimating wildlife population parameters as well as the potential capacities of camera trap in the researches of population dynamics and biodiversity, were comprehensively analyzed.

Archaea, as the third life form distinct from bacteria and eukaryota, widely distribute in various kinds of habitats, and play important roles in the biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nitrogen and in ecosystem functioning. As the biomarker of archaea, archaeal membrane lipids can be used to investigate the archaeal community composition and its responses to the environment. This paper introduced the structural characteristics of archaeal membrane lipids and the differences in the membrane lipids composition among different archaeal communities, and discussed the feasibility of using archeal membrane lipids in depicting archaeal community composition. The abundance of archaeal membrane lipids in the environment could be used to characterize the biomass of archaea, and the related results could complement and ascertain each other with the DNA-based bio-molecular approaches on the accuracy, analysis efficiency, and cost. Based on the description of the difficulties and importance of using archaeal membrane lipids to analyze the composition and abundance of archaeal communities, and by linking to the environmental factors such as temperature and pH that affected the archaeal community composition, the relationships between archaea and their habitats were further expatiated, and the evolution process of archaeal communities and its application prospects in the studies of geochemistry and geological events were analyzed.

Urbanization is the most drastic form of land use change, which affects the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and services far beyond the limits of cities. Based on the land use data in three time periods and by the method of landscape pattern analysis, this paper analyzed the change characteristics of the spatiotemporal pattern of urbanization in the four Banners of East Erdos at different spatial scales. Urbanization had profound effects on the local ecology, society, and economics. The landscape as a whole became more fragmented and complex, and different patch types exhibited distinctive spatial characteristics and were affected to different degrees at class-level. Desert and urban land varied greater, and cropland was most affected by urbanization. Resources factors, increase of urban population, and development of economy were the main socio-economic driving factors to the changes in the local landscape spatiotemporal pattern of urbanization.

How to assess environmental impact is one of the keys in land use planning. This article described in detail the concepts of activities, impact zones, functions, and sensitivities, as well as the development of STEPP (strategic tool for integrating environmental aspects in planning procedures) based on Avenue, the secondary developing language of ArcView GIS. The system makes it convenient for planning practitioners exchanging information, and can spatially, visually and quantitatively describe environmental impact and its change. In this study, the urban-rural combination area located between EDE and Veenendaal of The Netherlands was taken as case, and the results indicated that the environment was incorporated well in the planning procedure based on the concepts, and could also demonstrate the effects of planning measures on environment spatially, explicitly, and in real-time, facilitating the participation of planning practitioners and decision-making. Some proposals of how to promote STEEP application in China were suggested.

With the accelerating human consumption of natural resources, the problems associated with endangered species caused by habitat loss and fragmentation have become greater and more urgent than ever. Conceptually associated with the theories of island biogeography, population viability analysis (PVA) has been one of the most important approaches in studying and protecting endangered species, and this methodology has occupied a central place in conservation biology and ecology in the past several decades. PVA has been widely used and proven effective in many cases, but its predictive ability and accuracy are still in question. Also, its application needs expand. To overcome some of the problems, we believe that PVA needs to incorporate some principles and methods from other fields, particularly landscape ecology and sustainability science. Integrating landscape pattern and socioeconomic factors into PVA will make the approach theoretically more comprehensive and practically more useful. Here, we reviewed the history, basic conception, research methods, and modeling applications and their accuracies of PVA, and proposed the perspective in this field.

Effects of temperature, moisture and forest succession, as well as their interaction on nitrogen mineralization in hillside red soils in mid-subtropical region were investigated. The results showed that effects of temperature and succession stage on soil ammonification rate were significant with rate at 12 degrees C < 24 degrees C < 36 degrees C, and rate in shrub and Masson pine forest being lower than that in evergreen broad-leaved forest (P < 0.05), while the impact of moisture was not significant. Moisture and succession stage significantly affected the soil nitrification rate, with that of half-saturation being higher than natural and saturation moisture levels, and that in Masson pine forest being higher than in shrubs (P < 0.05), while temperature had no significant impact. The effects of temperature, moisture and succession stage on soil net N-mineralization rate were all significant, with 12 degrees C < 24 degrees C < 36 degrees C, half-saturation higher than natural and saturation, and shrubs < Masson pine forest < evergreen broad-leaved forest (P < 0.05). Soil ammonification and net N-mineralization rates increased with increasing temperature, while the maximum soil nitrification rate occurred at medium temperature. Moderate soil moisture would benefit the nitrogen mineralization process, and forest succession could improve soil nitrogen supply and restrain excessive nitrification.

Citations to journal papers in eight ecological journals at home and abroad were analyzed to identify key contributing factors and compare the difference between the selected Chinese and English journals. The results indicated that the annual average citations of English journals were much higher than those of Chinese journals. Percentage of single-authored papers was also higher in English journals than in Chinese journals. Co-authored papers accounted for a large proportion of papers published in all journals, indicating the significance of collaboration in modern ecological research. A positive correlation was observed between the number of authors and citation rate, but the relationship was weak in general. On an average, papers in English journals were longer than those in Chinese journals, and the annual average citations increased with paper length. By tracking the citation dynamics of papers, we found that the most cited papers in English journals had higher increasing citation rates. This suggested that they had a stronger persistence effect than those in Chinese journals. These results will provide some useful guidance for authors and editors in ecology.

By the methods of in situ investigation and regional ecological planning, the present ecological environment, ecosystem vulnerability, and ecological environment sensitivity in "Ji Triangle" Region were analyzed, and the ecological network of the study area was constructed. According to the ecological resources abundance degree, ecological recovery, farmland windbreak system, environmental carrying capacity, forestry foundation, and ecosystem integrity, the study area was classified into three regional ecological function ecosystems, i. e., east low hill ecosystem, middle plain ecosystem, and west plain wetland ecosystem. On the basis of marking regional ecological nodes, the regional ecological corridor (Haerbin-Dalian regional axis, Changchun-Jilin, Changchun-Songyuan, Jilin-Songyuan, Jilin-Siping, and Songyuan-Siping transportation corridor) and regional ecological network (one ring, three links, and three belts) were constructed. Taking the requests of regional ecological security into consideration, the ecological environment security system of "Ji Triangle" Region, including regional ecological conservation district, regional ecological restored district, and regional ecological management district, was built.