Forest soils play a critical role in the sequestration of atmospheric CO2 and subsequent attenuation of global warming. The nature and properties of organic matter in soils have an influence on the sequestration of carbon. In this study, soils were collected from representative forestlands, including a subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest (EBF), a coniferous forest (CF), a subalpine dwarf ...

Dredged sediment from Milwaukee Harbor showed two primary classes of particles in the <2 mm size range: a lighter-density coal- and wood-derived fraction with 62% of total PAHs and a heavier-density sand, silt, and clay fraction containing the remaining 38% of the PAHs. Room-temperature PAH desorption kinetic studies on separated sediment fractions revealed slow desorption rates for the coal-de...

We analysed the long-term variations in grain-size distribution in sediments from Gåsfjärden, a fjordlike inlet in the southwestern Baltic Sea, and explored potential drivers of the recorded changes in the sediment grain-size data. Over the last 5.4 thousand years (ky) in the study region, the relative sea level decreased 17 m, which was caused by isostatic land uplift. As a consequence, Gåsfjä...

Soil characteristics, disturbance histories, and species richness among distinct groups of plants and animals may be useful predictors of important conservation areas when data are limited. We used multivariate analysis of covariance to test the hypothesis that the species richness of plants, arthropods, herpetofauna, and breeding birds are correlated and increase with soil fertility (silt and ...

Cultivation in semiarid grasslands induces large changes in soil organic matter (SOM) stock. To better predict the effects of cultivation on SOM pools, there is a need to identify the soil fractions that are affected and the extent to which they are affected. Using four cultivation chronosequences in Inner Mongolian grasslands of northern China, we investigated the changes in soil organic carbo...

Soil structure depends on the association between mineral soil particles (sand, silt, and clay) and organic matter, in which aggregates of different size and stability are formed. Although the chemistry of organic materials, total microbial biomass, and different enzyme activities in different soil particle size fractions have been well studied, little information is available on the structure ...

Plant taxa identified in 90 U.S. Great Lakes coastal emergent wetlands were evaluated as indicators of physical environment. Canonical correspondence analysis using the 40 most common taxa showed that water depth and tussock height explained the greatest amount of species-environment interaction among ten environmental factors measured as continuous variables (water depth, tussock height, latit...

Environmental conditions influence patterns of local-scale plant productivity and species richness. We sampled soils and plant communities at a topographicallydiverse, mid-successional old field site in Kansas to better understand the abiotic factors underlying a natural plant productivity gradient. We related soil texture, pH, percent nitrogen and carbon, and soil moisture to elevation, plant ...

Batch experiments were conducted to study the sorption of uranium (U) onto soil in deionised water as a function of its dosage, temperature and humic acid (HA). Furthermore, soils were characterized for particle sizes in the form of sand (>63 µm), silt (>2-<63 µm) and clay (<2 µm). The textural analysis revealed that soils were admixture of mainly sand and silt along with a small abundance of c...