80% of arable land in Africa has low soil fertility and suffers from physical soil problems. Additionally, significant amounts of nutrients are lost every year due to unsustainable soil management practices. This is partially the result of insufficient use of soil management knowledge. To help bridge the soil information gap in Africa, the Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) project was est...

Riverine nitrate N in the Mississippi River leads to hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. Several recent modeling studies estimated major N inputs and suggested source areas that could be targeted for conservation programs. We conducted a similar analysis with more recent and extensive data that demonstrates the importance of hydrology in controlling the percentage of net N inputs (NNI) exported by r...

In contemporary world geography, there still remains a paucity of information that reveals the multi-faceted interrelationship of soils with the other components of the natural environment. This is extremely important information in light of current global ecological problems, studies, and policy decisions, one of which is the problem of climate change. While these have been long discussed in t...

The 1988 Yellowstone fire altered the structure of local forest ecosystem and left large non-recovery areas. This study assessed pre-fire drivers post-fire characteristics recovery areas examined possible reasons driving disturbance. Non-recovery were sampled with 44,629 points 77,501 points, from which attribute values related to topography, climate, subsequent soil conditions extracted. We ca...

Mollisols of Santa Fe have different tilth and load support capacity. Despite the importance of these attributes to achieve a sustainable crop production, few information is available. The objectives of this study are i) to assess soil physical indicators related to plant growth and to soil mechanical behavior; and ii) to establish relationships to estimate the impact of soil loading on the soi...

Libation, or the pouring of wine or blood on the ground, was an important element of religious practice in ancient Greek religion (Burkert 1985), indicating reverence for soil. Homer (c . 750 BC, Iliad 14.347) sang how ‘divine soil [χθών δı̂α] made fresh-sprung grass to grow, and dewy lotus, crocus and hyacinth’. A similar epithet ‘sacred soil’ [‘ιερòν πέδoν], which includes the root word for pe...

Interest in manure management and its effects on nitrogen (N) mineralization has increased in recent years. The focus of this research was to investigate the N-mineralization rates of different soil types in Coastal Plain soils and compare them to a soil from Illinois. Soils with and without dairy composted manure addition were subjected to different wetting/drying cycles [constant moisture at ...

Black soils (Mollisols) of northeast China are highly productive and agriculturally important for food production. Ammonia-oxidizing microbes play an important role in N cycling in the black soils. However, the information related to the composition and distribution of ammonia-oxidizing microbes in the black soils has not yet been addressed. In this study, we used the amoA gene to quantify the ...