In many crop producing areas of the world there are reports of yield decline and loss of productive potential in soils. Little is known about the long term effects of sugarcane monocropping on changes in physical, chemical and biological properties of soils. The aim of this study was to quantify the physical and chemical condition of soils under sugarcane production in northern Kwazulu-Natal, a...

7 Soil structure is often said to be the key to soil productivity since a fertile soil, with desirable 8 soil structure and adequate moisture supply, constitutes a productive soil. Soil structure 9 influences soil water movement and retention, erosion, crusting, nutrient recycling, root 10 penetration and crop yield. The objective of this work is to study, humic acid (HA) 11 application on some...

Soils are viewed in the context of ecosystem services, soil processes and properties, and key attributes and constraints. The framework used is based on the premise that the natural capital of soils that underlies ecosystem services is primarily determined by three core soil properties: texture, mineralogy, and soil organic matter. Up-todate descriptions and geographical distribution of soil or...

Morphological and physiological characteristics of biological soil crusts (BSCs) enhance soil stability and fertility, and influence soil chemistry. However, the effect of BSCs on soil physico-chemical properties may vary depending on taxa (cyanobacteria, lichen, bryophytes) and species, and be susceptible to soil surface disturbance. We examined a wide variety of soil physico-chemical properti...

In tundra ecosystems, bryophytes influence soil processes directly and indirectly through interactions with overstory shrub species. We experimentally manipulated moss cover and measured seasonal soil properties and processes under two species of deciduous shrubs with contrasting canopy structures, Salix planifolia pulchra and Betula glandulosa-nana complex. Soil properties (seasonal temperatur...

This study was conducted to evaluate the impact of municipal waste compost and manure on soil chemical and physical properties quality and crop production in Sari city (north of Iran). In this study, the effect of compost and manure (cow and sheep) on the quality of soil organic material with experimental measurements was investigated. An experiment was conducted in a completely randomized desi...

Question: How are the effects of mineral soil properties on understory plant species richness propagated through a network of processes involving the forest overstory, soil organic matter, soil nitrogen, and understory plant abundance? Location: North-central Arizona, USA. Methods: We sampled 75 0.05-ha plots across a broad soil gradient in a Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine) forest ecosystem. W...

Efficient information sharing is difficult to achieve in the scenario of emergency and rescue operations because there is no communication infrastructure at the disaster sites. In general, the network condition is relatively reliable in the intra-site environment but relatively unreliable in the inter-site environment. The network partitioning problem may occur between two sites. Although one c...

Nineteen Mediterranean natural soils with a wide range of properties and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) artificial soil were used to assess the influence of soil properties on the results of avoidance and reproduction tests carried out with the soil collembolan species Folsomia candida. Compared to natural soils, the OECD soil was mostly rejected by individual...

The photosynthetic leaf area may be influenced by soil texture. The objective of this experiment was to evaluate photosynthetic leaf area under different soil textures, based on soil electric conductivity (EC) measurements, tillage systems, and N rates in dryland corn (Zea mays L.) from 2007 to 2009. A commercially available soil electric conductivity (EC) measurement system (Veris Technologies...