This paper presents an automated method for creating spatial maps of soil condition with an outdoor mobile robot. Effective soil mapping on farms can enhance yields, reduce inputs and help protect the environment. Traditionally, data are collected manually at an arbitrary set of locations, then soil maps are constructed offline using Kriging, a form of Gaussian process regression. This process ...

Few experiments in the coastal plain region of the southeastern United States have reported the effect of long-term tillage and tillage intensity on chemical soil quality indicators. The purpose of this study was to determine the 17-year influence of four tillage systems on chemical soil quality indicators in a Benndale fine sandy loam (coarse-loamy, siliceous, semiactive, thermic, Typic Paleud...

A Canadian initiative to define and estimate indicators of the relationship between agricultural activities and environmental quality has been under way since 1993. This paper focuses on those indicators related to land quality and highlights the use of GIS to reconfigure land use and climatic data to a soil landscape spatial model in order to apply models of soil degradation. The 1981 and 1991...

Soil erosion in vineyards has to be considered as an environmental concern as it depletes soil fertility and produces damages in the fields and downstream. High soil and water losses decrease soil quality, and subsequently, can reduce the quality of the grapes and wine. However, in specialized journals of viticulture and enology, soil erosion studies are not present. This paper surveys the soil...

The concentration and distribution of Pb, Zn, Cu and Cr in the surface soil of three grassed swales located in the city of Beijing, Jiaxing and Shenzhen were studied in this paper. Evaluations on the risk of heavy metals were conducted based on the second level limit of soil environmental quality standard, using different indexes (i.e., single item, comprehensive items and potential ecological ...

the aim of this research was to compare the amounts of existing mineral elements in plant aerial parts, litter and soil ofthree range species (bromus tomentellus, psathyrostachys fragilis, agropyron tauri) in order to investigate the litter effectof species on soil properties of taleghan rangeland. the measured mineral elements include carbon, nitrogen,phosphorous and potassium. after selection...

The disposal of municipal solid waste into the landfills has been recognized as the major source of soil, surface water and groundwater contamination. Municipal solid waste disposal site for the city of Ludhiana, in Punjab, India, has become an overflowing landfill because of the indiscriminate dumping of solid waste at the site. The leachate produced by landfilling site contains a large amount...

Trecs can he considered as investments made by economic agents to prevent depreciation of natural assets such as stocks of top soil and water. In agroforestq systems farmers use trees in this manner by deliberately combining them with agricultural crops on the same unit of land. Although advocates of agroforestry have asserted that soil conservation is one of its primary henefits, empirical est...

Resolving fungal and bacterial groups within the microbial decomposer community is thought to capture disparate life strategies for soil microbial decomposers, associating bacteria with an r-selected strategy for carbon (C) and nutrient use, and fungi with a K-selected strategy. Additionally, food-web model-based work has established a widely held belief that the bacterial decomposer pathway in...