Changes in the carbon stocks of stem biomass, organic layers and the upper 50 cm of the mineral soil during succession and afforestation of spruce (Picea abies) on former grassland were examined along six chronosequences in Thuringia and the Alps. Three chronosequences were established on calcareous and three on acidic bedrocks. Stand elevation and mean annual precipitation of the chronosequenc...

The magnitude and direction of water transport by the roots of eight dominant Brazilian savanna (Cerrado) woody species were determined with a heat pulse system that allowed bidirectional measurements of sap flow. The patterns of sap flow observed during the dry season in species with dimorphic root systems were consistent with the occurrence of hydraulic redistribution of soil water, the movem...

abstract infiltration is a significant process which controls the fate of water in the hydrologic cycle. the direct measurement of infiltration is time consuming, expensive and often impractical because of the large spatial and temporal variability. artificial neural networks (anns) are used as an indirect method to predict the hydrological processes. the objective of this study was to develop ...

Land surface soil moisture (SSM) is crucial in research and applications in hydrology, ecology, and meteorology. A novel SSM retrieval model, based on the diurnal cycles of land surface temperature (LST) and net surface shortwave radiation (NSSR), has recently been reported. It suggests a promising avenue for the retrieval of regional SSM using LST and NSSR derived from geostationary satellites...

Hydraulic lift is the process by which some deep-rooted plants take in water from lower soil layers and exude that water into upper, drier soil layers. Hydraulic lift is beneficial to the plant transporting the water, and may be an important water source for neighboring plants. Recent evidence shows that hydraulically lifted water can promote greater plant growth, and could have important impli...

Natural gamma-emitting radionuclides (U, Ra, Th, Pb) and selected major and trace elements (Ca, K, Mg, Na, Fe, Al, Mn, Pb, Ba, Zn, Sr, Li, Co, Ni, Cu, Cr, Cd) were determined in a soil toposequence along a mountain slope of the Tertiary Flysch landscapes in the Central Spanish Pyrenees. A variety of basic properties were also measured from the soil profiles. Mean radioisotope activities (Bq kg ...

Abstract Steel sheet pile walls are being widely used in civil engineering projects for support systems. Soil is not uniform in depth, sometimes may be exit loose or soft soil layer in various depth. This issue can cause different effects on ground surface displacements, forces and moments acting on sheet piles and struts during excavation procedure, compared with status that soil is uniform...

Some species of centipedes and millipedes inhabit upper soil layers exclusively and are not recorded by pitfall trapping. Because of their sensitivity to soil conditions, they can be sampled quantitatively for evaluation of soil conditions. Soil samples are heavy to transport and their processing is time consuming, and such sampling leads to disturbance of the soil surface which land-owners do ...