In this study, total heavy metal content and its effects on soil microbiological characteristics were investigated in soil samples from an area with known long-term pollution problems. The total heavy metal concentrations of contaminated soil samples were 109 and 1,558 mg/kg for Hg and As, respectively. Key microbiological parameters measured included dehydrogenase activity, ATP content and num...

Management regimes of varying types and intensities can have profound impacts on grassland soil quality. Plus, there has recently been increased interest in finding soil quality indicators that are reflective of historical and current land management. We surveyed soil quality of privately owned grasslands in northeastern Kansas differing in their cultivation histories and current land-use (cool...

nitrogen forms exert significant effects on physiological and morphological characteristics of plant. in this study, the effects of ammonium, nitrate, and ammonium-nitrate on pepper plants were investigated in soil culture, as well as in solution culture. in the soil culture, 3, 4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate (dmpp) was used as a standard nitrification inhibitor to guarantee the presence of ammon...

Conversion of rice straw into biochar for soil amendment appears to be a promising method to increase long-term carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The stability of biochar in paddy soil, which is the major determining factor of carbon sequestration effect, depends mainly on soil properties and plant functions. However, the influence of plants on biochar stability in...

Data collected around the Santa Catalina Mountains in Arizona as part of the Cumulus Photogrammetric, In Situ and Doppler Observations (CuPIDO) experiment during the 2006 summer monsoon season are used to investigate the effect of soil moisture on the surface energy balance, boundary layer (BL) characteristics, thermally forced orographic circulations, and orographic cumulus convection. An unus...

Compressibility of a soil mass is its susceptibility to decrease in volume under pressure and is indicated by soil characteristics like coefficient of compressibility, compression index and coefficient of consolidation. However, the determination of soil compressibility characteristics in the labs is a cumbersome and time consuming process, especially in the case of fine grained soils. In the p...

Spatial patterns of soil moisture across a field seem to exhibit some degree of temporal stability, which has been proved to be related to such invariant attributes as topography and soil characteristics. However, how these patterns and locations might be predicted from these attributes is not well understood. Motivated by a desire to understand these relationships, the objective of this study ...

Nitrogen (N) fertilization may profoundly affect soil microbial communities. In this study, a field fertilization experiment was conducted in temperate grassland in Inner Mongolia, China to examine the effect of N fertilization on soil microbial properties and the main factors related to the characteristics of soil microbial community. Soil microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and microbial functiona...

A dynamic simulation model for the soil plant system is described. The model includes a number of main modules viz. a water model, a soil temperature model, a soil nitrogen model including a submodel for soil organic matter dynamics, and a crop model including a submodel for nitrogen uptake. The soil part of the model has a one dimensional vertical structure. The soil profile is divided into la...

Paired vegetable/soil samples from New York City and Buffalo, NY, gardens were analyzed for lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and barium (Ba). Vegetable aluminum (Al) was measured to assess soil adherence. Soil and vegetable metal concentrations did not correlate; vegetable concentrations varied by crop type. Pb was below health-based guidance values (EU standards) in virtually all fruits. 47% of root cr...