Conventional agriculture has improved in crop yield but at large costs to the environment, particularly off-site pollution from mineral N fertilizers. In response to environmental concerns, organic agriculture has become an increasingly popular option. One component of organic agriculture that remains in question is whether it can reduce agricultural N losses to groundwater and the atmosphere r...

Land use type is key factor in restoring the degraded soils due to its impact on soil chemical properties and microbial community. In this study, the influences of land use type on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) community and soil chemical properties were assessed in a long-run experimental station in subtropical hilly area of southern China. Soil samples were collected from forest land, o...

Management of large volumes (60,000 ha-m) of co-production water associated with coal bed natural gas (CBNG) water extraction is a potential concern in the Powder River Basin (PRB) of Wyoming and Montana due to elevated water salinity and sodicity levels. Land application of saline-sodic CBNG water is a common water management method being practiced in the PRB, which can result in deterioration...

Recent monitoring shows that the majority of urban streams in the United States are contaminated by pesticide residues, and the contamination is mainly due to runoff from residential landscapes. In this study we evaluated the effect of landscape planting on persistence of the herbicides 2,4-D and dicamba in soil under laboratory conditions. The herbicides exhibited substantially different persi...

Cryosols cover approximately 18 x 10 km, or about 13% of the Earth’s land surface. They occur in the permafrost zones in both the Northern Hemisphere and Antarctica as well as in some alpine regions. Cryosols are of global concern since it is predicted that both Polar Regions will experience a significant increase in average temperature. The primary concern, however, is the impact that global w...

On-site soils are increasingly used in the treatment and restoration of ecosystems to harmonize with the local landscape and minimize costs. Eight natural soils from diverse ecological zones in the source area of a drinking-water reservoir in central China are used as adsorbents for the uptake of phosphorus from aqueous solutions. The X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometric and BET (Brunauer-Emm...

The effect of soil properties like adsorption, desorption, movement and distribution of endosulfan (1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 7-hexachlorobicyclo (2, 2, 1)-2-heptene-5, 6-bisoxymethlene sulfite) in two tropical soils, sandy loam and sandy clay soil from Mysore, Karnataka state were studied respectively. The results indicated that soils with different physico-chemical properties have different effects on t...

Land application of coalbed natural gas (CBNG) co-produced water is a popular management option within northwestern Powder River Basin (PRB) of Wyoming. This study evaluated the impacts of land application of CBNG waters on soil chemical properties at five sites. Soil samples were collected from different depths (0-5, 5-15, 15-30, 30-60, 60-90, and 90-120 cm) from sites that were irrigated with...

BACKGROUND Extensive studies have been conducted to evaluate the effect of external organic Carbon on native soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition. However, the direction and extent of this effect reported by different authors is inconsistent. OBJECTIVE The objective was to provide a synthesis of existing data that comprehensively and quantitatively evaluates how the soil chemical propertie...

Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne pathogen responsible for the potentially fatal disease listeriosis and terrestrial ecosystems have been hypothesized to be its natural reservoir. Therefore, identifying the key edaphic factors that influence its survival in soil is critical. We measured the survival of L. monocytogenes in a set of 100 soil samples belonging to the French Soil Quality Monit...