Afforestation of former croplands has been proposed as a promising way to mitigate rising atmospheric CO2 concentration in view of the commitment to the Kyoto Protocol. Central to this C sequestration is the dynamics of soil organic C (SOC) storage and stability with the development of afforested plantations. Our previous study showed that SOC storage was not changed after afforestation except ...

Given the water scarcity becoming endemic to a large portion of the globe, arid region irrigation has resorted to the use of treated, partially treated, or even untreated wastewaters. Such waters contain a number of pollutants, including surfactants. Applied to agricultural lands, these surfactants could affect the fate and transport of other chemicals in the soil, particularly pesticides. A fi...

Soil loss through wind and water erosion is an ongoing problem in semiarid regions. A thin layer of top soil loss over a hectare of cropland could be corresponding to tons of productive soil loss per hectare. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the influence of beef feedlot manure, tillage and legume grass mixtures on changes in soil quality and nutrient components. The study was init...

Land-applied animal manure can be a major contributor of agricultural nonpoint source pollution. For surface-applied manures the time period prior to the first runoff is of greatest concern, because most enteric species initially exhibit rapid die-off rates. The objectives of this investigation were to follow the die-off of indicator organisms after manure application to a bar? soil surface and...

abstract the effect of land use type on soil functioning within an ecosystem can be assessed and monitored using soil quality attributes. such studies, which are carried out to create a balance between the biological production and the maintenance and improvement of land resource quality, provide a framework for land degradation control and also for identification of sustainable management. in ...

It has been pointed out that tobacco accumulates cadmium as well as other potentially toxic heavy metals. A three year study was carried out to provide information on the concentration of heavy metals in air-cured (Burley), flue-cured (Virginia) and sun-cured (Oriental-filling) tobacco produced in the Thessaly region of central Greece. During the years 1998, 1999 and 2000, 474 composite surface...

Two incubation experiments were conducted under controlled moisture and temperature conditions to determine the effects of soil amendment treatments based on pruning waste biochar and oyster shell, on N2O and CO2 emissions from an orchard soil. In experiment 1, four treatments were tested including, control (CK), pruning waste biochar at 2% (B2%), at 10% (B10%), and oyster shell (OS), mixed wit...

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 ...

in this study we report the rock magnetic properties of surface soil samples and their spatialvariability from the northernmost district of kerala to understand pedogenic processes and soil erosion. themagnetic signal is mainly from fine grained pedogenic magnetite as other sources like anthropogenic andlithogenic magnetite, bacterial magnetite and greigite are absent. the surface soil samples ...