To determine the relationship between changes in soil physical properties due to tillage and growth of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) seedlings, we measured soil moisture and penetration resistance for a range of tillage treatments on two Upper Coastal Plain sites in Georgia and correlated these measurements to the growth of individual seedlings. The five tillage treatments were: no-till (NT), ...

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 ...

Coverage of clay surfaces by soil organic matter (SOM) may limitthe efficacy of the soil mineral fractions for adsorption of organic contaminants and pesticides. Two methods were scrutinized for quantitatively assessing the availability of clay surfaces in a smectitic Webster A-horizon soil for sorption of p-nitrocyanobenzene (p-NCB) and diuron. One method, described previously, involves the su...

There are numerous Cr(III)-contaminated sites on Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Energy (DOE) lands that are awaiting possible clean up and closure. Ingestion of contaminated soil by children is the risk driver that generally motivates the likelihood of site remediation. The purpose of this study was to develop a simple statistical model based on common soil properties to estimate...

Invasive plants are recognized for their impressive abilities to withstand adverse environmental conditions however, all invaders do not express the similar abilities. Therefore, survival, growth, nutrient uptake and fecundity of two co-occurring, invasive Physalis species were tested under water and salinity stresses, and different soil textures in the current study. Five different water stres...

Subsoil compaction can result in unfavourable soil physical conditions and hinder the root growth of maize. The effects of deep tillage and conventional tillage on soil physical properties and root growth of maize were studied during 2010–2011 at two sites (loam at Hebi and clay at Luohe) in central China. The results showed that soil penetration resistance, bulk density, water content and root...

Copyright: © 2014 Xiong Li, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Soils are known to be “skin of the earth” and carry the material basis for human beings. As one of the basic disciplines of ag...

Plant ecologists require spatial information on functional soil properties but are often faced with soil classifications that are not directly interpretable or useful for statistical models. Sand and clay content are important soil properties because they indicate soil water-holding capacity and nutrient content, yet these data are not available for much of the landscape. Remotely sensed soil r...

Najafi-Ghiri M., Abtahi A. (2013): Potassium fixation in soil size fractions of arid soils. Soil & Water Res., 8: 49–55. Amounts of potassium (K) fixed in soil fractions of 10 calcareous soils of southern Iran were measured to evaluate the contributions of different soil size fractions to K fixation. Soil particles were fractionated after dispersion of the soils with an ultrasonic probe. Potass...