New Advances in Vegetation Dynamics and Soil Systems Related to Biogeochemical Cycles

Dear Colleagues,

The aim of this MDPI Topic is to bring together novel environmental studies that improve our understanding of vegetation dynamics and soil systems related to biogeochemical cycles under changing environments. Vegetation and soils play a crucial role in two major carbon fluxes (i.e., CO₂ uptake via photosynthesis and its efflux via respiration) in global carbon cycles. Over the past decades, numerous environmental studies have been conducted to reveal vegetation dynamics and soil systems that drive biogeochemical cycles which vary spatially and temporally in response to various environmental changes. These studies have made substantial contributions to our understanding of future Earth environments, yet there remain numerous unresolved questions. Nevertheless, recent progress in remote sensing, micrometeorological techniques, isotope and chemical ecology, microbial ecology, soil science, and data analysis hold promise for overcoming these limitations. In this MDPI Topic, we call for papers that make advances in vegetation dynamics and soil systems related to biogeochemical cycles under changing environments. Contributions may include, but are not limited to, the following topics and themes:

• Remote sensing and micrometeorological techniques
• Advanced techniques in ecosystem-scale observations
• Soil–Plant–Atmosphere Continuum theory
• Big spatio-temporal scale data mining
• Environmental impacts of agricultural and forest ecosystems
• Isotope and chemical ecology for understanding soil microbial metabolism
• Isotope labeling of substrates and organisms
• Analyses of natural abundances of stable and radioactive isotopes
• Data fusion using spatial distribution datasets of isotope abundances
• Microbial ecology in vegetation and soil systems
• Interactions between microbes and biogeochemical cycles
• Microbial-animals, -plants, and -microbial interactions
• Evaluation of active and inactive microbial communities
• Microbial growth and death responding to the environmental changes
• Mechanistic or molecular-level analysis of biogeochemical processes that drive the elemental cycle
• Molecular level analysis of soil and dissolved organic matter employing state-of-the-art techniques such as NMR and FT-ICR-MS
• Molecular indicators of particular sources or ecological processes
• Linking small scale processes to ecosystem scale patterns
• Disentangling plant and microbial organic matter in soils
• Analyses of material dynamics within soil over short time scale

We welcome contributions that focus on all terrestrial ecosystems.

Dr. Hirohiko Nagano
Dr. Hiroki Ikawa
Dr. Morimaru Kida
Dr. Masataka Nakayama
Topic Editors