Publications by authors named "Helen Snell"
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates how climate change factors, specifically reduced snow cover and shrub expansion, affect nutrient cycling in alpine grasslands, which are experiencing warming at twice the global average.
- The combination of these factors significantly disrupts the seasonal coupling of plant and soil microbial nitrogen cycling, leading to substantial decreases in plant nitrogen uptake and soil microbial biomass during critical seasonal periods.
- Overall, these disruptions hinder the ability of alpine ecosystems to retain nitrogen and maintain plant productivity, raising concerns for their resilience under ongoing climate change.
An Evaluation of Barriers and Facilitators for a Pressure Injury Prevention Link Nurse Role: A Mixed-Methods Study in New Zealand.
J Wound Ostomy Continence Nurs
February 2023
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify barriers and facilitators for nurses in a pressure injury prevention (PIP) link nurse role.
Design: Mixed-methods study that used nominal group technique with focus groups, followed by online surveys.
Sample And Setting: The PIP link nurse project recruited 52 RNs; 32 completed the PIP educational program and participated in data collection.
Article Synopsis
- Climate change is affecting mountain ecosystems by reducing winter snow cover, causing earlier spring snowmelt, and leading to shrub expansion in alpine areas.
- Research shows that changes in snow conditions impact soil microbial communities and function, with these effects lasting into summer.
- The expansion of ericaceous shrubs alters these impacts, enhancing certain soil microbes while reducing soil respiration and nitrogen availability, indicating that vegetation shifts can influence soil responses to climate change in alpine regions.
Aims And Objectives: To compare diabetes-related prescribing practices, barriers and facilitators amongst nurse prescribers in New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Background: Nurses have been prescribing in the United Kingdom for many years but nurse prescribing in New Zealand is relatively recent. It is unknown whether similar system factors act to facilitate or limit prescribing.
Soil microbial communities regulate global biogeochemical cycles and respond rapidly to changing environmental conditions. However, understanding how soil microbial communities respond to climate change, and how this influences biogeochemical cycles, remains a major challenge. This is especially pertinent in alpine regions where climate change is taking place at double the rate of the global average, with large reductions in snow cover and earlier spring snowmelt expected as a consequence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtracellular enzymes break down soil organic matter into smaller compounds and their measurement has proved to be a powerful tool to evaluate the functionality of soils. Urease is the enzyme that degrades urea and is widely considered to be a good proxy of nitrogen (N) mineralisation. But the methods available to measure this enzyme are time consuming; as such, urease is not commonly included in standard enzyme profiling of soils.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMinimising methodological biases to improve the accuracy of partitioning soil respiration using natural abundance 13C.
Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom
November 2014
Rationale: Microbial degradation of soil organic matter (heterotrophic respiration) is a key determinant of net ecosystem exchange of carbon, but it is difficult to measure because the CO2 efflux from the soil surface is derived not only from heterotrophic respiration, but also from plant root and rhizosphere respiration (autotrophic). Partitioning total CO2 efflux can be achieved using the different natural abundance stable isotope ratios (δ(13)C) of root and soil CO2. Successful partitioning requires very accurate measurements of total soil efflux δ(13)CO2 and the δ(13)CO2 of the autotrophic and heterotrophic sources, which typically differ by just 2-8‰.
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