Despite baboons' widespread distribution across Africa, geophagy among all subspecies has been poorly documented. We used video camera traps and soil analyses to investigate geophagy in chacma baboons (Papio cynocephalus ursinus) inhabiting the Western Cape of South Africa. During an 18-month study, from August 2009 to January 2011, we continually monitored the largest and most frequently visit...

Improving swine effluent management practices requires understanding of the fate of nutrients derived from swine effluent in soil quality. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of long-term swine lagoon effluent application on nutrient distribution in an alkaline Okolona silty clay, an acidic Vaiden silty clay, and a Brooksville silty clay loam. Swine effluent has been applied using ...

soil hydraulic properties are key soil physical characteristics that are required to conduct soil and water related studies such as irrigation and drainage. in this study, three indirect methods: inverse modeling, pedo-transfer function, and the semi-physical method of arya et al., were compared in a sandy loam soil to estimate soil moisture retention and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity curv...

Correspondence José Martín, Departamento ae Ecología Evolutiva, Museo Nacional de Ciencías Naturales, eSle, José Gutiérrez Abaseal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spaín, Tel. +34914111328; Fax: +34 915645078 Email: [email protected] Amphisbaenians are reptiles specialized for a fossoríal lifestyle, which may limit their opportunities for microhabitat selection in comparison with epigeal reptiles, \Ve ...

The effect of gypsum on the physical and chemical characteristics of sodic soils is nonlinear and controlled by multiple factors. The support vector machine (SVM) is able to solve practical problems such as small samples, nonlinearity, high dimensions, and local minima points. This paper reports the use of the SVM regression method to predict changes in the chemical properties of sodic soils un...

Due to the high activity of microorganisms, the loss of soil organic matter is high in tropical regions. This loss becomes even greater if the soil is managed improperly or when there is no technology that leverages the permanence of the soil carbon by maintaining appropriate levels of organic matter, providing chemical, physical and biological soil improvements and contributing to reduce CO2 e...

The utilization of treated agro-industrial effluents has been recommended as sound option for agriculture irrigations practices and sustainable land management programme. This paper presents the impact of utilizing treated effluent form a distillery industry on physico-chemical properties of soils in an agriculture plot. The effluent was applied in 50 and 100% strength and a control plot receiv...

Human activity is one of the main causes of the physical, chemical and biological degradation of soils. This degradation implies a change in soil quality as it involves both a decrease in productivity and changes in the ecological functions of the soil. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of soil use on soil biochemical properties, with the aim of providing data tha...

The aim of this study is to analyze the effects of forest gaps on the variations of soil properties in Castanopsis kawakamii natural forest. Soil physical and chemical properties in various sizes and development stages were studied in C. kawakamii natural forest gaps. The results showed that forest gaps in various sizes and development stages could improve soil pore space structure and water ch...

Growing cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) in an agroforestry system generates a productive use of the land, preserves the best conditions for physical, chemical and biological properties of tropical soils, and plays an important role in improving cacao production and fertility of degraded tropical soils. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of two long term agroforestry systems of cacao ma...