Description of Materials Soil profiles developed from Dwyka tillite consist of a fine sandy loam overlying a gravel and rubble layer and succeeded by a zone of clay illuviation. Below this, the disintergrating tillite may proceed to depths of two hundred feet under favourable circumstances. This material in its most weathered aspect consists of a "soapy" orangy yellow fine silty clay of the fol...

One of the main factors of water erosion is the natural characteristics of the soil called "erodibility" or"detachability". The present study aims to analyze the variations of soil erodibility factor in different plains and thefactors related to it. Erodibility is one the key factors in some models of erosion and sediment such as Universal SoilLoss Equation (USLE), Revised USLE (RUSLE), and Mod...

It is widely recognized that global warming promotes soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition, and soils thus emit more CO2 into the atmosphere because of the warming; however, the response of SOC decomposition to this warming in different soil textures is unclear. This lack of knowledge limits our projection of SOC turnover and CO2 emission from soils after future warming. To investigate the CO...

Novel carbon sequestration strategies such as large-scale land application of biochar may provide sustainable pathways to increase the terrestrial storage of carbon. Biochar has a long residence time in the soil and hence comprehensive studies are urgently needed to quantify the environmental impacts of large-scale biochar application. In particular, black carbon emissions from soils amended wi...

Sample preparation effects on the compaction properties of Swedish fine-grained tills Per Lindh & M.G. Winter Head of Malmö Branch, Swedish Geotechnical Institute, Hospitalsgatan 16 A, SE-211 33 Malmö, Sweden and Ph.D. Student at Dept. of Soil Mechanics, Lund University. Regional Manager (Scotland), TRL Limited, Redwood House, 66 Spylaw Road, Edinburgh EH10 5BR, UK F ine-grained tills are a dom...

North Africa experienced dramatic changes in hydrology and vegetation during the late Quaternary driven by insolation-induced shifts of the tropical rain belt and further modulated by millennial-scale droughts and vegetation-climate feedbacks. While most past proxy and modelling studies concentrated on the temporal and spatial dynamics of the last African humid period, little is known about the...

The combination of isotope trace technique and SOC fractionation allows a better understanding of SOC dynamics. A five-year tillage experiment consisting of no-tillage (NT) and mouldboard plough (MP) was used to study the changes in particle-size SOC fractions and corresponding δ (13)C natural abundance to assess SOC turnover in the 0-20 cm layer of black soils under tillage practices. Compared...