Ruixing Hou

institute of geographic sciences and natural resource research, CAS, Beijing · Agro-ecosystem

Climate warming threatens global food security by exacerbating pressures on degraded soils under intensive crop production. Conservation agriculture is promoted as a sustainable solution that improves soil health and sustains crop yields in a changing climate, but these benefits may be affected by long-term warming. Here, we investigate the effects...

Increasing crop nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) has important implications for food security and agricultural sustainability. Changes in nutrient availability due to stoichiometric imbalances in soil under long-term application of nitrogen (N) can limit crop NUE and yield. However, little is known about the linkages across stoichiometric balance, N f...

Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) in croplands by switching from conventional to conservation management may be hampered by stimulated microbial decomposition under warming. Here, we test the interactive effects of agricultural management and warming on SOC persistence and underlying microbial mechanisms in a decade-long controlled experiment on...

Soil salinisation has been considered a substantial ecosystem issue with negative effects on sustainable agricultural practices. Practices of vegetation restoration are widely conducted for coping with saline soil degradation, especially in saline-alkali abandoned farmland. Compared with bulk soils, the rhizosphere soils of plants have different mi...

The formation of soil inorganic carbon in saline–alkali lands is of great significance for enhancing soil carbon sequestration. As for the formation mechanisms, in addition to the discovered abiotic mechanisms, the microbial mechanisms remain unclear. To address this, soil microbes were isolated from the saline–alkali farmland of the Yellow River D...

Soil salinization and nitrogen (N) enrichment in saline–alkali soils resulting from human activities cause potential environmental pressure on Phragmites australis. However, the response of P. australis to N addition under different salt conditions remains unknown. This study examined the changes in soil properties and growth indices as well as the...

Dimethyl phthalate (DMP) is one of the most widely used plasticizers, and it is easily released into the environment, posing a threat to microbes. In this study, the impact of DMP on the uptake and metabolism of sugars in E. coli K-12 was assessed using proteomics, computational simulation analysis, transcriptome analysis, and sugar utilization exp...

Cultivating ecological benefits in agricultural systems through greenhouse gas emission reduction will offer extra economic benefits for farmers. The reported studies confirmed that organic fertilizer application could promote soil carbon sequestration and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions under suitable tillage practices in a short period of time....

Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE), a combination of respiration and growth, plays a central role in the flow of carbon through soil. Carbon-depleted agricultural soils are promoted as a global sink for atmospheric carbon in a warming climate. There is an urgent need to understand whether increased soil respiration from warmed cropland soils red...

Ecological pig-raising systems (EPRSs) differ from conventional breeding systems, focusing more on environmental consequences, human health, and food safety during production processes. Thus productions from EPRSs have undergone significant development in China. Thus far, adding plant fiber sources (e.g., sweet potato leaves, maize or wheat straw,...

Exploring the changes in wheat traits under future climate change and their contributions to yield changes is essential to improve the understanding of climate impact mechanisms and develop climate-resilient cultivars, which however has been seldom conducted. In this study, using a process-based crop model (APSIM-Wheat), meta-regression analyses, a...

Excessive mineral fertilizer input results in little extra yield but exacerbates insect herbivory and affects environmental health and ecosystem services. The use of organic fertilizer is considered to have promise for mitigating those impacts. How organic fertilizer amendment modifies crop resistance to insect herbivory and modulates biocontrol se...

Understanding the interactive effects of different warming levels and tillage managements on crop morphological and physiological traits and radiation use efficiency (RUE) is essential for breeding climate‐resilient cultivars. Here, we conducted temperature free‐air controlled enhancement (T‐FACE) experiments on winter wheat during two growth seaso...

The ecological livestock husbandry tends to be popular in China but the real situation is many models appeared without scientific analysis. And very limited theoretical researches compared ecological breeding systems and livestock species on environmental and economic and carrying capacity aspects. To choose the best pig-raising method and compare...

The application of bioorganic fertilizer affects rhizosphere microbes and further improves soil fertility in farmlands. However, the effects of different fertilizers on rhizosphere bacterial community diversity and structure of winter wheat remains unclear. In this study, we explored the effects of different fertilization treatments (no fertilizer...

The structure of the pig-raising sector in China is changing towards large-scale and intensive systems or ecological pig-raising systems (EPRSs). To choose the best EPRS with high economic benefits and with low environmental consequences, this study combined economic analysis and emergy analysis methods to evaluate several EPRSs. Having a large per...

Temperate plants may show different photosynthetic acclimation capacities, involving varying physiological processes/mechanisms, during different seasons in response to global warming because of seasonal climate variation. Thus, we conducted field warming experiments for winter wheat in its four seasonal periods. These experiments allowed us to exa...

Temperature response and sensitivity of photosynthesis and respiration are critical for projection of changes in the carbon exchange and net primary production of terrestrial ecosystems under global warming. Understanding the mechanisms and processes of photosynthetic and respiratory acclimation in response to warming may shed further lights on the...

Despite the obvious importance of roots to agro-ecosystem functioning, few studies have attempted to examine the effects of warming on root biomass and distribution, especially under different tillage systems. In this study, we performed a field warming experiment using infrared heaters on winter wheat, in long-term conventional tillage and no-till...

Despite the perceived importance of nitrogen (N) to growth and production of wheat, few studies have attempted to examine the effect of warming on wheat N uptake or its preference for NO⁠3⁠−-N vs. NH⁠4⁠+-N, especially under different tillage systems. In the North China Plain, an experimental warming (2°C increase in soil during the jointing stage)...

Agricultural soils are widely recognized to be capable of carbon sequestration that contributes to mitigating CO2 emissions. To better understand soil organic carbon (SOC) stock dynamics and its driving and controlling factors corresponding with a period of rapid agronomic evolution from the 1980s to the 2010s in the North China Plain (NCP), we col...

Aims Try to detect the spatiotemporal dynamics and the controlling factors of soil organic carbon (SOC) in the North China Plain (NCP) over the last 30 years: 1980s-2010s. Methods We investigated the SOC evolution by compiling data from 32 published papers during the last 30 years. Then we examined the spatial pattern and controlling factors by ana...

Differences in soil organic carbon (SOC) distribution, water holding capacity, and soil temperature between no-tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) systems can result in different soil CO2 emissions which could affect global warming but few studies have addressed this concern. An open warming experiment was conducted in situ by infrared heati...

Aims Nematodes are sensitive to environmental changes and are strongly affected by tillage practices. However, it remains unclear whether an increase in soil temperature in conventional tillage (CT) and no-tillage (NT) cropland systems would have a significant effect on nematode communities. The response of soil nematodes to increases in temperatur...

Global warming is expected to affect tritrophic interactions between plants, herbivores, and their natural enemies. Tillage, as a pervasive anthropogenic perturbation, also affects agricultural pests and their natural enemies in cropland systems. The effect of warming combined with tillage on tritrophic interactions is poorly known. A field experim...

We examined the warming effects on the stomatal frequency, stomatal aperture size and shape, and their spatial distribution pattern of maize (Zea may L.) leaves using a light microscope, an electron scanning microscope, and geostatistic techniques. A field manipulative experiment was conducted to elevate canopy temperature by 2.08°C, on average. We...

Previous reports from laboratory-controlled experiments and models considered that a shorter reproductive period could be the main reason for wheat yield reduction in the warmer world. However, this conclusion needs to be proved carefully by field-scale experiments. In this study, a field-scale continuous open-warming experiment was conducted to qu...

A suitable tillage-residue management system is needed in the North China Plain (NCP) that sustains soil fertility and agronomic productivity. The objectives of this study were to determine the effects of different tillage-residue managements for a winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and summer maize (Zea mays L.) double-crop system on soil organic...

The Loess Plateau in northwest China is one of the most eroded landscapes in the world, and it is urgent that alternative practices be evaluated to control soil erosion. Our objective was to determine how three different tillage practices for monoculture of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) affected soil organic carbon (SOC) and N content after 1...