In this paper, a set of physical, geochemical and mineralogical indicators are proposed for the correlation of soil age. The parameters studied allowed the highlighting of trends in soil aging as well as the relating of these trends to specific soil forming processes. Soil aging was marked by a progressive increase in clay content and a decrease in silt/clay ratio, a slight reduction in the CEC...

American chestnut trees once dominated vast areas of deciduous forest in eastern North America, but the exotic chestnut blight almost eliminated the species from the region. Introduction of blight-resistant American chestnut hybrids will probably start in the next decade after many years of tree breeding. What were the historic effects of chestnut on forest soils, and what changes may follow re...

Seashores and river bottoms are constantly eroded by the flow processes. Grains of various types, including gravel, sand, silt, clay, mixed at different ratios, demonstrating varying characteristics, constituent materials these eroding land features. The present study quantifies importance geomechanical properties soils, with a large fraction granular material smaller portion fine grain particl...

Soils harbor a high diversity of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RubisCO) large subunit coding genes (cbbL). Real-time PCR was used to quantify this gene in differently managed agricultural soils and soil microhabitats. We developed primers and a TaqMan probe that target the "red-like" RubisCO gene cbbL. Primers and probe were developed based on cbbL sequences of selected bacte...

nineteen irrigated farms of canola from six cities of khorasan selected to assess the seedling emergence one month after sowing in 2009. soil texture of each farm determined using the hydrometer method. the results showed that weather conditions of sowing areas had no significant effect on emergence of oilseed rape. with increasing the temperature (within the range of 19.5 to 21.5 ˚c) emergence...

The first granulometrical analysis of soil samples from nesting banks of the Malachite Kingfisher Alcedo cristata is reported. In total 56 samples from the Kinshasa area were analysed. Three standardised particle size fractions were determined in all groups of samples (percentage of sand, clay and silt). Mean particle percentage of soil samples from banks occupied by Malachite Kingfishers avera...

Various soil texture schemes are in current use. These differ in the size ranges of their particle fractions. There is a need to establish simple methods to correlate these conventional schemes. Therefore I have defined closed-form exponential and power law functions to fit models to cumulative particle-size distribution data. I have tested the functions for their suitability (i) to represent c...