Libation, or the pouring of wine or blood on the ground, was an important element of religious practice in ancient Greek religion (Burkert 1985), indicating reverence for soil. Homer (c . 750 BC, Iliad 14.347) sang how ‘divine soil [χθών δı̂α] made fresh-sprung grass to grow, and dewy lotus, crocus and hyacinth’. A similar epithet ‘sacred soil’ [‘ιερòν πέδoν], which includes the root word for pe...

Soils are routinely sampled and characterized according to genetic horizons (layers), resulting in data that are associated with principal dimensions: location (x,y), depth (z), and property space (p). The high dimensionality and grouped nature of this type of data can complicate standard analysis, summarization, and visualization. The aqp package was developed to address some of these issues, ...

Soils and crops are nowadays particularly vulnerable to climate change environmental stresses. In many agrosystems, soil biodiversity the ecosystem services, provides under threat from a range of natural manmade drivers. Agricultural soils perturbated by agronomic practices so far adopted that disrupt trophic networks large extent make less productive in long term. this scenario, sustainable us...

Soil classifiers have taken their lead from biologists but have not produced an internationally accepted system even though the WRB is supported by the IUSS. More recently Mazaheri et al. (1995a, 1995b) have tried to introduce Fuzzy logic into soil classification. They achieved a small amount of success when their technique was applied to selected soils in Australia but failed when applied to o...

The recovery of degraded areas is imperative for the sustainability mining activities. main action implemented to improve chemical, physical and biological conditions soils, tailings sterile deposits incorporation organic material. Biosolids (hygienized sewage sludge) are among materials that can be applied. However, considering health risk they represent, not all suitable receiving this waste....