Soil compaction adversely influences most terrestrial ecosystem services on which humans depend. This global problem, affecting over 68 million ha of agricultural land alone, is a major driver of soil erosion, increases flood frequency and reduces groundwater recharge. Agricultural soil compaction has been intensively studied, but there are no systematic studies investigating the extent of comp...

Urban community gardens worldwide provide significant health benefits to those gardening and consuming fresh produce from them. Urban gardens are most often placed in locations and on land in which soil contaminants reflect past practices and often contain elevated levels of metals and organic contaminants. Garden plot dividers made from either railroad ties or chromated copper arsenate (CCA) p...

INTRODUCTION To promote rational and sustainable use of soil resources and to maintain the urban soil quality, it is essential to assess urban ecosystem health. In this study, the microbiological properties of urban soils in Beijing and their spatial distribution patterns across the city were evaluated based on measurements of microbial biomass carbon and urease and invertase activities of the ...

Urban soil quality is often degraded and a challenging substrate for trees. This study was conducted to assess the impacts of biochar (BC), biosolids (BS), wood chips (WC), compost (COM), aerated compost tea (ACT), and a nitrogen plus potassium fertilizer (NK) for improving three typical urban soils and tree sapling growth. Across the three soil types, the most significant changes in soil prope...

The current study evaluates the impact of sewage sludge and urban reservoir sediment on changes in total and Toxic Equivalency (TEQ) PCDD/PCDF concentration in soil and phytotoxicity measured using three test species: Lepidium sativum, Sinapis alba, and Sorghum saccharatum, during 5 weeks of Cucurbita pepo L. cv 'Atena Polka' (zucchini) cultivation. 'Atena Polka' was found to reduce total PCDD/...

Although it has been studied for over 160 years, the urban heat island (UHI) effect is still not completely understood, yet it is increasingly important. The main purpose of this work is to improve UHI modeling by using AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) satellite data to retrieve the surface parameters (albedo, as well as soil thermal and moisture properties). In this study, a hy...

The present study documents the Hg content in 45 urban topsoil samples from the highly urbanized city of Athens, Greece. The Hg concentrations were quantified by applying aqua regia digestion on the <100 μm soil fraction followed by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) with a detection limit of 5 μg·kg−1. The median concentration of Hg in Athens soil is 96 μg·kg−1; ten out of 4...

Although urban community gardening can offer health, social, environmental, and economic benefits, these benefits must be weighed against the potential health risks stemming from exposure to contaminants such as heavy metals and organic chemicals that may be present in urban soils. Individuals who garden at or eat food grown in contaminated urban garden sites may be at risk of exposure to such ...