Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The mechanism presented is that ectomycorrhizal fungi can compete with free-living decomposers for nutrients, and thereby limit the rate of total decomposition. Since then there have been several other reports of ectomycorrhizal fungi reducing activity and decomposition rates of free-living decomposers and thereby increasing soil carbon storage.
Barrels of salt beef and other products in a reconstruction of an American Civil War stockpile, at Fort Macon State Park, North Carolina. During the Age of Discovery, salt meat was one of the main foods for sailors on long voyages, for instance in the merchant marine or the navy. In the 18th century, salted Irish beef, transported in barrels ...
The rate of decomposition is governed by three sets of factors: the physical environment (temperature, moisture and soil properties), the quantity and quality of the dead material available to decomposers, and the nature of the microbial community itself. [64] Decomposition rates are low under very wet or very dry conditions.
The aquatic microbial loop is a marine trophic pathway which incorporates dissolved organic carbon into the food chain.. The microbial loop describes a trophic pathway where, in aquatic systems, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is returned to higher trophic levels via its incorporation into bacterial biomass, and then coupled with the classic food chain formed by phytoplankton-zooplankton-nekton.
Digestion of food involves depolymerization of macromolecules, such as proteins. It is relevant to polymer recycling. Sometimes the depolymerization is well behaved, and clean monomers can be reclaimed and reused for making new plastic. In other cases, such as polyethylene, depolymerization gives a mixture of products.
The spoilage of meat occurs, if the meat is untreated, in a matter of hours or days and results in the meat becoming unappetizing, poisonous, or infectious. Spoilage is caused by the practically unavoidable infection and subsequent decomposition of meat by bacteria and fungi, which are borne by the animal itself, by the people handling the meat, and by their implements.
Ecosystem services are ecologically mediated functional processes essential to sustaining healthy human societies. [6] Water provision and filtration, production of biomass in forestry, agriculture, and fisheries, and removal of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) from the atmosphere are examples of ecosystem services essential to public health and economic opportunity.
Human waste and food waste do not provide optimum conditions for composting. Usually the water and nitrogen content is too high, particularly when urine is mixed with feces. Additives or "bulking material", such as wood chips, bark chips, sawdust, shredded dry leaves, ash and pieces of paper can absorb moisture.