Biobased product life cycle assessments (LCAs) have focused largely on energy (fossil fuel) usage and greenhouse gas emissions during the agriculture and production stages. This paper compiles a more comprehensive life cycle inventory (LCI) for use in future bioproduct LCAs that rely on corn or soybean crops as feedstocks. The inventory includes energy, C, N, P, major pesticides, and U.S. EPA c...

Biosolids land application for beneficial reuse applies varying amounts of trace metals to soils. Measuring plant-available or total soil metals is typically performed to ensure environmental protection, but these techniques do not quantify which soil phases play important roles in terms of metal release or attenuation. This study assessed the distribution of Cd, Cr, Cu, Mo, Ni, Pb, and Zn asso...

Soil microorganisms are largely responsible for biogeochemical fluxes in the terrestrial biosphere that effect ecosystem productivity and alter global climate patterns. Though the importance of soil microorganisms is easy to state, little is known about interactions between microbes necessary for the production of ecosystem-scale fluxes. Furthermore, measurement of biogeochemical fluxes at the ...

Research techniques that have greatly advanced agronomic science in the 20th century, and have enhanced our knowledge of cause and effect, have been accompanied by reductionism. As a result, much valuable research has been accomplished, but less synthesis of results has occurred that provides answers to landscape-level research questions. We propose that a systems approach to the study of soil ...