Late Quaternary soils in southern New Mexico support previous work that suggested pedogenic gypsum accumulates in successive stages as a function of time, similar to pedogenic carbonate. However, gypsum also occurs as small (0·5}1 mm), powdery spheres that we term snowball morphology. The snowball morphology represents one of the initial stages of pedogenic gypsum development. Scanning electron...

Gypsum board is a common fire barrier used in house and general building construction. Recently, evaluation of the collapses of the World Trade Center Towers highlighted the potential role and failure of gypsum board in containing the fires and resisting damage. The use of gypsum board as primary fire protection of light-flame wood or steel construction is ubiquitous. Yet knowledge of the commo...

We present coupled sulfur and oxygen isotope data from sulfur nodules and surrounding gypsum, as well as iron and manganese concentration data, from the Lisan Formation near the Dead Sea (Israel). The sulfur isotope composition in the nodules ranges between -9 and -11‰, 27 to 29‰ lighter than the surrounding gypsum, while the oxygen isotope composition of the gypsum is constant around 24‰. The ...

application of soil conditioners for remediation of saline- sodic soils is one of the common methods for improving soil properties in arid and semi-arid regions. in order to study the effect of soil conditioners on retention of soil moisture content, an experiment was carried out based on randomized complete block design with three replications in a saline-sodic sandy clay loam soil. the treatm...

The experimental and theoretical studies of supercooled liquid water strongly suggest that the two liquid waters and their liquid-liquid critical point (LLCP) exist at low temperature. However, the decisive experimental evidence of the LLCP has not been obtained because of the rapid crystallization of liquid water in the "no-man's land." Here, we observed experimentally the pressure-induced pol...

Water quality specialists and agricultural extension personnel, among others, need estimates of soil solution Ca concentrations when evaluating the soil chemistry of irrigated arid lands. Existing prediction methods require computer models or extensive numerical calculations, which are often not convenient to use by field personnel. A new graphical method for calculating the equilibrium chemica...