• The Korean Journal of Soil Zoology
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.63-70
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• 2000

The effect of combinations of temperature, water column height and extraction time onthe efficiency of wet funnel extraction methods for enumerating Enchytraeids in a blanket bog peat soil from Moor House, Cumbria, England were investigated. The optimal conditions for extracting enchytraeids from this study were found to be a water surface temperature of 35$^{\circ}C$, with an extraction time of 6 hours, regardless of initial water temperature and water level in the extraction funnel. The original O'Connor method (40-45$^{\circ}C$ for 3 hours extraction and gradually increasing heating) yielding a high variation in the extraction efficiency, largely due to the comparatively higher temperature and shorter extraction time than this method. Attempts to extract without heat over longer periods showed very low extraction efficiencies for this highly organic blanket bog soil when compared with any of the heating wet funnel methods.

• Proceedings of the National Institute of Ecology of the Republic of Korea
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2020

Many areas of vegetation in the British uplands have reduced species diversity as a result of sheep overgrazing. It has been suggested that abandonment or re-wilding strategies might be used to reverse this. A likely first step would be the removal or reduction of grazing livestock from upland areas, with a presumption that this would lead to a recovery in species richness. However, we do not know if this would work, or the timescales involved. One of the important areas where more knowledge is needed is information on the size and composition of soil seedbanks as regeneration from zseed is a likely pathway of recovery. Here, we compared seedbanks in both grazed and ungrazed plots in five experiments at Moor House NNR in the northern Pennines; these sheep grazing exclusion experiments were started 52 and 63/64 years ago. Soil samples (n=10) were collected from both grazed and ungrazed plots in each experiment, and seed emergence counted in glasshouse trials. We detected only seeds of common species and very few dicotyledonous species. This suggests that the soil seedbank is unlikely to be a reliable source of the less common species for ecological restoration in these upland communities, suggesting an extinction debt. Therefore, seed addition and the creation of suitable safe-sites for germination may be needed in conjunction with grazing controls to allow the establishment of plants that will increase the species richness of the vegetation. However, this interventionist restoration approach remains to be tested.