Publications

Beule L., Karlovsky P. (2021). Early response of soil fungal communities to the conversion of monoculture cropland to a temperate agroforestry system. PeerJ, 9(), e12236. doi:10.7717/peerj.12236

Background Alley-cropping systems in the temperate zone are a type of agroforestry in which rows of fast-growing trees are alternated with rows of annual crops. With numerous environmental benefits, temperate agroforestry is considered a promising alternative to conventional agriculture and soil fun…

Graß, R. (2021). Grünland und Gehölz in Partnerschaft. Land&Forst, (16), p. 36-37.

http://www.signal.uni-goettingen.de/wcm/wp-content/uploads/Artikel_Agroforst_LandForst.pdf

Schmiedgen A., Komainda M., Kowalski K., Hostert P., Tonn B., Kayser M., Isselstein J. (2021). Impacts of cutting frequency and position to tree line on herbage accumulation in silvopastoral grassland reveal potential for grassland conservation based on land use and cover information. Annals of Applied Biology, (), . doi:10.1111/aab.12681

In agricultural grassland, high herbage utilisation efficiency (HEFF), which is the proportion of gross live‐green herbage production that is utilised before entering senescence, is ensured by frequent defoliation. The decision upon which defoliation frequency to apply depends on the farming intensi…

Schmidt M., Corre M., Kim B., Morley J., Göbel L., Sharma A., Setriuc S., Veldkamp E. (2021). Nutrient saturation of crop monocultures and agroforestry indicated by nutrient response efficiency. Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems, 119(1), 69-82. doi:10.1007/s10705-020-10113-6

Efficient use of nutrients is a key requisite for a sustainable intensification of agriculture in order to meet the increasing global crop demand while minimizing deleterious environmental impacts. Agroforestry systems exhibit tree–crop interactions, which potentially contribute to nutrient-efficien…

Beule L., Arndt M., Karlovsky P. (2021). Relative Abundances of Species or Sequence Variants Can Be Misleading: Soil Fungal Communities as an Example. Microorganisms, 9(3), 589. doi:10.3390/microorganisms9030589

Plant production systems that are more sustainable than conventional monoculture croplands are the vision of future agriculture. With numerous environmental benefits, agroforestry is among the most promising alternatives. Although soil fungi are key drivers of plant productivity and ecosystem proces…

Beule L., Karlovsky P. (2021). Tree rows in temperate agroforestry croplands alter the composition of soil bacterial communities. PLOS ONE, 16(2), e0246919. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0246919

Background Tree-based intercropping (agroforestry) has been advocated to reduce adverse environmental impacts of conventional arable cropping. Modern agroforestry systems in the temperate zone are alley-cropping systems that combine rows of fast-growing trees with rows of arable crops. Soil microbia…

Heidrich V., Karlovsky P., Beule L. (2021). ‘SRS’ R Package and ‘q2-srs’ QIIME 2 Plugin: Normalization of Microbiome Data Using Scaling with Ranked Subsampling (SRS). Applied Sciences, 11(23), 11473. doi:10.3390/app112311473

Several ecological data types, especially microbiome count data, are commonly sample-wise normalized before analysis to correct for sampling bias and other technical artifacts. Recently, we developed an algorithm for the normalization of ecological count data called ‘scaling with ranked subsampling …

Graß R., Malec S., Wachendorf M. (2020). Biomass Performance and Competition Effects in an Established Temperate Agroforestry System of Willow and Grassland—Results of the 2nd Rotation. Agronomy, 10(11), 1819. doi:10.3390/agronomy10111819

Agroforestry systems (AFSs) are promoted as environmentally friendly and climate-change-resilient cultivation systems with the potential of increasing ecosystem services. Especially under temperate climatic conditions, the implementation in agricultural practice is low so far, inter alia due to the …

Wachendorf C., Piepho H., Beuschel R. (2020). Determination of litter derived C and N in litterbags and soil using stable isotopes prevents overestimation of litter decomposition in alley cropping systems. Pedobiologia, 81-82(), 150651. doi:10.1016/j.pedobi.2020.150651

Litter decomposition is an important ecosystem process mediated by soil organisms. It has been widely estimated by determining mass loss rates of plant residues applied in litterbags. However, catabolic degradation of litter by soil organisms is overestimated when the transfer of undecomposed or par…

Beuschel R., Piepho H., Joergensen R., Wachendorf C. (2020). Effects of converting a temperate short-rotation coppice to a silvo-arable alley cropping agroforestry system on soil quality indicators. Agroforestry Systems, 94(2), 389-400. doi:10.1007/s10457-019-00407-2