The leeward Kohala Field System on the island of Hawai‘i was one of the most intensive pre–European contact dryland agricultural systems. Archaeological and soil analysis has documented changes in soil nutrients over time. Soils were collected under agricultural field walls of different relative ages within the Kohala Field System. These field walls preserved soil from the time of their constru...

urban expansion and agriculture intensification are relevant drivers in land degradation (ld)processes in europe due to net loss of land, soil sealing, landscape fragmentation and other negative effects on the environment. this paper explores changes (or “trajectories” of change) in land use and cover (lulc) and their relationship with the consumption of soils in emilia-romagna (northern italy)...

BACKGROUND Tillage practices greatly affect carbon (C) stocks in agricultural soils. Quantification of the impacts of tillage on C stocks at a regional scale has been challenging because of the spatial heterogeneity of soil, climate, and management conditions. We evaluated the effects of tillage management on the dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC) in croplands of the Northwest Great Plains e...

Farming practices are known to exert strong control over the soils’ function to act as sources or sinks for greenhouse gases (GHG). A recent meta-analysis based on the evaluation of 74 published long-term system comparisons provides a comprehensive data base regarding soil organic matter development (SOM) and C sequestration potential of organic systems (Gattinger et al., 2012). Furthermore, th...

The aim of this article is to present a sort of state of the art from a soil classification point of view. How far are soils from their original natural state? A few years ago, the two most important soil classification systems added a classification of anthropogenic soils. Even so, although the concept of anthropogenic soil differs slightly in the two systems, it is easy to recognize these soi...

Land application of contaminated waste products has been defended as beneficial use by some scientists and regulators, based on the premise that the behavior of any toxins accumulated in soils from this practice is reasonably well understood and will not have detrimental agronomic or environmental impacts into the foreseeable future. In this review, I use the case of toxic metals in sewage slud...

*A contribution from the Estación Experimental Agricola en Tingo Maria, Peru, a technical agricultural service organization for the Oriente of Peru, operated jointly by the Dirección de Colonización y Asuntos Orientales, Ministry of Agriculture of Peru, and by the Ofläce of Foreign Agricultural Relations, U. S. Department of Agriculture. This study was made possible by funds provided through th...

Soils contaminated with hydrocarbons (C(10)-C(50)), PAHS, lead and other heavy metals were recently found in the banks of two major rivers in southern Québec. Alluvial soils are contaminated over a distance of 100 kilometers. Eight sampling sites, including some located in agriculture areas (farm woodlots) have been selected to compare air pollution (aerosol fallout and rainout) and river pollu...

Accounting for the fate of inorganic N fertilizer in agricultural systems is critical to sustainable production. Sebilo et al. (1) provide a unique long-term record of NO3 fertilizer fate that demonstrates N molecules from a discrete fertilizer application are transferred to soil organic matter (SOM) and subsequently mineralized over the course of approximately 100 y, during which they contribu...

Anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing (anammox) bacteria have been detected in many marine and freshwater ecosystems. However, little is known about the distribution, diversity, and abundance of anammox bacteria in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, anammox bacteria were found to be present in various agricultural soils collected from 32 different locations in China. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S...