Ashutosh Kumar Singh

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Ashutosh Kumar verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden

There is a direct link between the increasing human population and soil degradation that raises current and future food security concerns. Soil amelioration using beneficial microorganisms, particularly arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), is essential and pragmatic. AMF produces glomalin that also contributes to the mitigation of soil degradation....

The growing global need for latex is driving rubber plantation (RP) expansion since the last century, with >2 Mha of cultivation area being established in the last decade. Southeast Asia is the hotspot for rubber cultivation at other land-use costs. Although rubber cultivation has improved the economic status of farmers, it has altered the habitat'...

Technogenic soil (technosol) developed from coal fly ash (FA) landfilling has been considered a critical environmental problem worldwide. Drought-tolerant plants often naturally grow on FA technosol. However, the impact of these natural revegetations on the recovery of multiple ecosystem functions (multifunctionality) remains largely unexplored and...

Glomalin-related soil protein (GRSP) is a potential byproduct of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and a major contributor to the passive soil organic carbon (SOC) pool. Despite its crucial role in SOC storage, we know little about the response of GRSP to anthropogenic global change factors (GCFs). Here, using 530 observations from 107 primary stu...

The deterioration of soil and water resources resulting from tropical rainforest (TR) conversion to monoculture plantations (e.g., rubber monoculture; RM) could be restrained and restored through intercropping. However, the response of soil properties and forest water conservation function to forest conversion, i.e., the conversion of RM to rubber...

Successful use of stable isotopes (δ²H and δ¹⁸O) in ecohydrological studies relies on the accurate extraction of unfractionated water from different types of soil samples. Cryogenic vacuum distillation (CVD) is a common laboratory‐based technique used for soil water extraction; however, the reliability of this technique in reflecting soil water δ²H...

Rubber monoculture plantations are expanding but may cause environmental problems, and rubber-based agroforestry can provide ways of more environmentally friendly rubber cultivation. The general objective of this study was to investigate plant soil water uptake in different rubber agroforestry systems with water stable isotopes (δ²H and δ¹⁸O), and...

Soil erosion by water is known to be a major driver of land degradation. Splash erosion is the initial stage of water erosion and directly contributes to the detachment of soil particles on sloping land. Splash erosion may be exacerbated or mitigated by ongoing land use/cover change. To estimate the effects of various land use and management system...

Plant competition is a determinant of plant community formation, while resource partitioning is regarded as a critical factor for maintaining species coexistence under competition. However, how resource partitioning varies with species richness remains unclear; additionally, empirical studies of the dynamic processes involved in plant resource comp...

Although the establishment of grazing enclosures is often considered an important strategy of reducing soil degradation, their effect on hydrological functions is still poorly understood, particularly in dry‐hot savanna systems with heavy livestock grazing. In addition, the different roles played by the herb roots and the niche differentiation of w...

Natural tropical landscapes have been continuously altered by land use change and other climate factors. Forest management practices have transformed massive tropical forests into rubber plantations throughout mainland Southeast Asia and Southwest China. However, the effect of the forest-to-plantation conversion on ecosystem functions associated wi...

The hillslope is an essential natural spatial gradient that influences hydrological processes by affecting water distribution, surface flow, soil erosion, and groundwater recharge. To date, few studies have addressed only the hydrological processes of tropical forest hillslopes. To reveal the effect of hillslope on soil hydrological functioning—inc...

Heavy metal pollution is becoming recurrent and threatens biota biosafety in many agricultural fields. Diverse solutions explore the application of amendments to enable remediation. Sulfur represents a nonmetallic chemical element that actively affects heavy metals phytoextraction, and promotes and alternatively mitigates soil functions. In this st...

Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) concentration is an essential aspect of afforestation. Glomalin-related soil protein (GRSP) is a ubiquitous component of SOC, preferentially produced by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) during symbiotic association with the plant roots. Although the role of AMF in GRSP production is well-established, the role...

Forestry and greening programs in urban area are faced due to lack of awareness about multiple roles/benefits of trees, especially their role in drought proofing, prevention of soil and water run-off, degraded land restoration, livelihood security and sustainable development. In this regard, Butea monosperma (Lam.) Taubert, a medium-sized legume tr...

Anthropogenic land use change (LUC) affects soil quality and the global carbon (C) pool. Such LUC is a potential threat for forest ecosystems because it can alter soil biome and increases the emission of greenhouse gasses (GHGs). Here, we investigated the changes in soil quality and CO2 emission following afforestation of reclaimed coal mine land a...

Land degradation is a global problem caused by improper agricultural practices. In tropical China, the rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) plantations are predominantly practiced on forest-cleared lands, considering their sustainable land management potential compared to annual cropping. However, all rubber plantations may not have similar land management...

Plant litter is an important component of forest ecosystems and has a key role in reducing soil and water loss. This study evaluated the effect of land use change on rainfall interception and other hydrological processes associated with the litter layer in the tropical region of Southwest China, where large areas of tropical rainforest (TR) have be...

Conversion of forest to rubber plantation is one of the most common land-use change in the humid tropical region. It is one of the fastest expanding farms that lead to various socioenvironmental issues. We investigated the effect of this land-use change on soil physico-chemical properties by surveying different succession stage rubber plantations,...

Rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) plantations have been facing a double challenge of land degradation and seasonal drought in Southeast Asia. Various cash crops are recently interplanted with rubber trees to face these issues. However, the water relations between rubber trees and the intercrops remain poorly understood. This study aims to evaluate the in...

Banana (Musa nana Lour.) plants have a distinctive canopy pattern with their extremely long and wide leaves. However, the effects of such distinct leaf shapes on rainfall redistribution and splash erosion are still poorly understood. Here, we investigated the basic characteristics of throughfall (TF) distribution and throughfall kinetic energy (TKE...

Elemental sulfur is intensively used to control weeds and rubber leaf diseases. However, the mechanisms contributing to elemental sulfur dissipation and decay (hereafter decay) in rubber agroforestry remains unclear. This study relates hydrological processes such as runoff and soil loss to the changes in soil total sulfur (Stot) and sulfate (S–SO4)...

Most of the world’s tropical landscapes are experiencing changes in land-use and land-cover. In Yunnan Province in southwestern China, land-use changes are widespread throughout the tropics, with large areas of tropical forests being converted to banana (Musa spp.) plantations. In this study, we explored the effects of banana trees’ funnel-shaped l...

Despite the development of rubber agroforestry systems for ecological and economic benefits in Southeast Asia, knowledge of their water uptake dynamics and interspecific water interactions remains limited. The objective of this study is to reveal the water relations (i.e., competition/complementarity) between rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) trees and di...

Saccharum is a genus of perennial tall grasses which can naturally colonize extreme habitats of a range of waste land. Several Saccharum spp. L. are of multiutility and facilitates multiple functions in an ecosystem, though, they are neglected and underutilized. These species can utilize soil resources more efficiently and sustained to a large rang...

Tropical dry forests influence climate through physical, chemical and biological processes that affects the hydrologic cycle, composition of the atmosphere and the planetary energetic. The presence of tropical dry forests may potentially enhance the livelihood through providing food, fodder and firewood as well as in mitigation of the impact of cli...

The soil hydrological process plays an important role in transporting and distributing water in soils. However, the correlation between water flow behaviors, soil physical properties, infiltration patterns of soil exhibiting different soil layers, and the variation patterns in water flow behavior in rubber-based agroforestry systems remain poorly u...

Tropical dry forest (TDF) covers large areas of tropics and characterized by a mosaic type of plant communities that occur as the co-dominant multi-species sites to predominant mono-species. Previous forest management practices leading to incorporation of certain alien species and recombination or modification of the forest communities. However, we...

The revegetation on mine spoiled lands has potential to improve the status of reclaimed mine-soil quality. However, to date the temporal dynamics of labile and stable fractions of soil organic carbon (SOC) and glomalin related soil protein (GRSP) have not been satisfactorily demonstrated. We investigated SOC and GRSP fractions including labile part...

Wildfire is a recurrent ecological disturbance in the tropical dry forest (TDF) due to high fuel load and lengthy dry season. TDF covers a large area of the tropics, but relatively few studies have documented how wildfires influence soil microbial properties. Here, we have explored its influence on microbial bio-mass carbon (C mic), microbial respi...

Long-term history of tillage and cropping mediated disturbed and undisturbed use soils effect on glomalin related soil protein (GRSP) and soil organic carbon (SOC) and on their sub fractions were investigated in Indo-Gangetic plain region. In this study, shallow soils were collected from 50-year-old monoculture treatments of undisturbed (Dendrocala...

Ecological restoration of degraded lands is of great importance for sustainable development of environment. In order to determine the biological potential of species to aid soil restoration, it is necessary to evaluate litter production, its temporal variation, their rate of decomposition and nutrient release. In this study therefore, we examined p...

It should be noted that promoting application of L. camara does not means to increase production or cultivation in agriculture land but to minimize its infestation in the tropical forests. Although, this kind of application cannot eradicate or remove L. camara from forest but of course potentially minimize their infestation, and eventually provides...