This paper develops a knowledge discovery procedure for extracting knowledge of soil-landscape models from a soil map. It has broad relevance to knowledge discovery from other natural resource maps. The procedure consists of four major steps: data preparation, data preprocessing, pattern extraction, and knowledge consolidation. In order to recover true expert knowledge from the error-prone soil...

The Mediterranean region is particularly prone to erosion. This is because it is subject to long dry periods followed by heavy bursts of erosive rainfall, falling on steep slopes with fragile soils, resulting in considerable amounts of erosion. In parts of the Mediterranean region, erosion has reached a stage of irreversibility and in some places erosion has practically ceased because there is ...

Structure is an important factor of soil functioning in ecosystems. Soil aggregate size distributions are commonly used to characterize soil structure. Relationships between density of dry soil aggregates and aggregate size present a different way to use aggregate-related information in soil structure characterization. Those relationships have been simulated assuming soils to be mass fractals. ...

Although most deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) lesions are accurately repaired before replication, replication across unrepaired lesions is the main source of point mutations. The lesion tolerance processes, which allow damaged DNA to be replicated, entail two branches, error-prone translesion synthesis (TLS) and error-free damage avoidance (DA). While TLS pathways are reasonably well established, D...

Road and rail networks provide critical support for society, yet they can be degraded by seasonal soil movements. Currently, few transport network operators monitor small-scale soil movement, but understanding the conditions contributing to infrastructure failure can improve network resilience. Persistent Scatterers Interferometry (PSI) is a remote sensing technique offering the potential for n...

New and emerging policies that aim to set standards for protection and sustainable use of soil 10 are likely to require identification of geographical risk/ priority areas. Soil degradation can be 11 seen as the change or disturbance in soil quality and it is therefore crucial that soil and soil 12 quality are well understood to protect soils and to meet legislative requirements. To increase 13...

16S rRNA gene analysis has emerged as one of the valuable tools that are being utilized in investigating the molecular phylogenetic structure of the particular environment. Here, we embarked upon understanding and delineating the molecular phylogeny structure of microbes in polluted soil samples from cancer prone belt of the Punjab, India, which is highly contaminated with herbicide, pesticide ...