Fifty-seven typical surface soils and 108 deeper soils were collected from five former industrial sites in Beijing and concentrations of total Hg (SigmaHg) as well as pH, total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), total sulfur, and dissolved organic carbon concentrations determined. The mean concentration of SigmaHg in surface soils was significantly greater than background concentrations in the v...

Compound specific stable isotope analyses of managed soils using isotope ratio mass spectrometry have been undertaken as a means of determining early land use practices. delta (15)N amino acid signals demonstrate differences between manured grassland, unmanured grassland and continuous cereal cultivation under long-term experimental land use control conditions, with delta (15)N in hydrophobic a...

Thr red colour of many of the soils in the Mediterranean region was the main reason that in the past the broad term “Red Mediterranean soils”, occasionally “terra rossa”, became quite a common indication for all soils in the region (YAALON, 1997). BRESSON (1993) stated that Red Mediterranean soils resulted from a bisiallitic type of weathering with the release of high amounts of iron oxides clo...

Outsiders often oversimplify Amazon soil use by assuming that abundantly available natural soils are poorly suited to agriculture and that sporadic anthropogenic soils are agriculturally productive. Local perceptions about the potentials and limitations of soils probably differ, but information on these perceptions is scarce. We therefore examined how four indigenous communities in the Middle C...

A theoretical and numerical model is developed for the quantitative analysis of coupled processes taking place in active waste containment systems, such as electrokinetic barriers or fences, in which a low intensity DC current is circulated across the clay barrier to move polar and non-polar contaminants. A novel feature of the proposed approach is the allowance for the presence of air in the p...

With little precipitation (<10 cm water equivalent annually as snow), soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV) have limited water available to support hydrological or biogeochemical processes. Active layer depths across most of this landscape are <1 m. Saturated sediments are obvious in wetted margins on the shorelines of lakes, extending for up to ~10 m into a zone where typically arid MDV soils...

This investigation was performed to provide heavy metal signatures of urban soils, dusts, rainwater and to evaluate potential sources in Arak, Markazi Province. Thirty-one samples of urban soils, 29 dust and16 rainwater samples were collected in Arak city. Then, Pb, Cu, Zn, As and Ni concentrations were determined by using atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Application of discriminant analysi...

BACKGROUND Knowledge about silver nanoparticles in soils is limited even if soils are a critical pathway for their environmental fate. In this paper, speciation results have been acquired using a silver ion selective electrode in three different soils. RESULTS Soil organic matter and pH were the most important soil properties controlling the occurrence of silver ions in soils. In acidic soils...

The use of pesticides in modern agriculture is unavoidable because they are required to control weeds. Pesticides are poisonous; hence, they are dangerous if misused. Understanding the fate of pesticides will be useful to use them safely. Therefore, contaminations of water and soil resources could be avoided. The fates of pesticides in soils are influenced by their sorption, decomposition and m...

Strains of Pseudomonas that produce antimicrobial metabolites and control soilborne plant diseases have often been isolated from soils defined as disease-suppressive, i.e., soils, in which specific plant pathogens are present, but plants show no or reduced disease symptoms. Moreover, it is assumed that pseudomonads producing antimicrobial compounds such as 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol (DAPG) or p...