In the 1990s and early 2000s, there was widespread pessimism on the status of soil science in most parts of the world. This was mainly due to dwindling research budgets, reduced number of students and the overall perception that soil science and pedology were dead and buried. Renewed interest in agriculture for food, feed and fuel has brought soils back onto the global research agenda. Soil ero...

Mashhad city is located on alluvial deposits where the expanded area of this city, especially the central and eastern areas surrounding Imam Reza holy shrine, are built on weak and fine-grained deposits. Therefore, the soil improvement would be inevitable due to construction of high-rise buildings such as hotels and commercial complexes in these areas, as well as restructuring old buildin...

Although roots in dry soil layers are commonly rehydrated by internal hydraulic redistribution during the nocturnal period, patterns of tissue rehydration are poorly understood. Rates of nocturnal rehydration were examined in roots of different orders in Vaccinium corymbosum L. 'Bluecrop' (Northern highbush blueberry) grown in a split-pot system with one set of roots in relatively moist soil an...

An erosion control product made by shredding on-site woody materials was evaluated for mitigating erosion through a series of rainfall simulations. Tests were conducted on bare soil and soil with 30, 50, and 70% cover on a coarse and a fine-grained soil. Results indicated that the wood product known as wood shreds reduced runoff and soil loss from both soil types. Erosion mitigation ranged from...

Root biomass is one of the most relevant root parameters for studies of plant response to environmental change, soil carbon modeling or estimations of soil carbon sequestration. A major source of error in root biomass quantification of agricultural crops in the field is the presence of extraneous organic matter in soil: dead roots from previous crops, weed roots, incorporated above ground plant...

Global changes such as variations in plant net primary production are likely to drive shifts in leaf litterfall inputs to forest soils, but the effects of such changes on soil carbon (C) cycling and storage remain largely unknown, especially in C-rich tropical forest ecosystems. We initiated a leaf litterfall manipulation experiment in a tropical rain forest in Costa Rica to test the sensitivit...