Outbreaks of clubroot disease caused by the soil-borne obligate parasite Plasmodiophora brassicae are common in oilseed rape (OSR) in Sweden. A DNA-based soil testing service that identifies fields where P. brassicae poses a significant risk of clubroot infection is now commercially available. It was applied here in field surveys to monitor the prevalence of P. brassicae DNA in field soils inte...

A robust new approach for describing and segmenting landforms which is directly applicable to precision farming has been developed in Alberta. The model uses derivatives computed from DEMs and a fuzzy rule base to identify up to 15 morphologically defined landform facets. The procedure adds several measures of relative landform position to the previous classification of Pennock et al. [39, 40]....

The spatial and temporal stability of soil test values is important to the use of soil testing for nutrient management. A study was conducted to evaluate the spatial and temporal stability of soil test phosphorus (P). Five sites ranging in size fiom 9.1 to 10.8 acres were soil sampled in the same locations in a 60 X 60 ft. grid either three or four times over a two year period. Bray 1 -P values...

Study of soil properties like field capacity (F.C.) and permanent wilting point (P.W.P.) play important roles in study of soil moisture retention curve. Although these parameters can be measured directly, their measurement is difficult and expensive. Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) provide an alternative by estimating soil parameters from more readily available soil data. In this investigation, 7...

Overtopping, internal erosion, and piping are the main causes of accidents and failures of embankments for dams, lagoons, and levees. A key parameter in the failure of these structures is the erodibility of the soil materials used in construction of the embankments. The soil materials are typically constructed based on compaction specifications. The jet erosion test (JET) has been developed to ...

The thinning of loblolly pine plantations has a great potential to influence the fluxes and storage of carbon within managed stands. This study looked at the effects of thinning on aboveground carbon and mineral soil carbon storage, 14-years after the thinning of an 8-year-old loblolly pine plantation on the piedmont of Virginia. The study also examined soil respiration for one year following t...

To enhance the vegetation signal in remotely sensed data and provide an approximate measure of live green vegetation, a number of spectral vegetation indices have been developed to estimate biophysical parameters of vegetation. The sensitivity of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to the soil background and atmospheric effects has generated an increasing interest in the developme...

Completely decomposed granite (CDG) soil is the most common type of soils found in more than 90% of the land area in Hong Kong. The measurement of the stress-strain-strength behaviour of the CDG soil is very important for deformation and stability analysis of slopes, retaining walls, excavations, deep and shallow foundations related to the CDG soil ground. As most of these geotechnical structur...

To assess the problems posed by ecological testing of the toxicity of polluted soils, we applied the Collembola reproduction test to the soil from a mining site polluted by metals. Our aim was to quantify the chronic toxicity of contaminated soil using the Folsomia candida reproduction test. Briefly, the polluted soil, which contains in particular large quantities of arsenic, is mixed in variou...