Plastic plants and patchy soils

Plastic plants and patchy soils.

Soil nutrients are distributed in a non-uniform or 'patchy' manner. It is well established that the modular nature of root systems allows them to show both morphological and/or physiological plasticity upon encountering nutrient-rich patches. These plastic responses are widely believed to be foraging mechanisms by the plant to enhance nutrient resource capture. Although morphological plasticity...

Fumigating Soils and Plants

Fumigants differ from other types of insecticides in that the fumes must be confined so that the insect is exposed to a considerable concentration for some time. The length of exposure and the strength of the concentration are interrelated—the higher the concentration, the shorter the lethal exposure; the lower the concentration, the longer the exposure. Fumigants therefore are not well adapted...

Residues, Soils, and Plants

Since the mîd-1940's there has been a renewed and heightened interest in questions involving residues of agricultural chemicals in soil. This has occurred because agriculture has been recently supplied with a number of entirely new synthetic compounds for pest control, of largely unknown stability and toxicity to plants when present in the soil. During the Second World War, when DDT first came ...

Selenium in Soils and Plants

Elasto-plastic analysis of reinforced soils using mesh-free method

In this paper the application of the mesh-free method (MFM) for the elasto-plastic analysis of reinforced soils is studied for the first time. The applied mesh-free method is called the radial point interpolation method (RPIM). In MFM, unlike the finite element method (FEM), there is no need of mesh in the traditional sense, and the shape functions are based on nodes. In the present study the r...