T responses of terrestrial ecosystems to global environmental change, and the resulting impacts on the natural resources on which humans depend, are topics of great societal concern and current scientific interest (Vitousek 1994). Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are expected to raise the mean temperatures of Earth’s surface by 1.4°C to 5.8°C during this century (Houghton et al. 2001...

Taxonomic categories of the highest level (e.g. the RSG of the World Reference Base for soil resources) are not adequate when dealing with trace element concentrations in soils. This does not however mean that pedology, its basic concepts and knowledge accumulated over more than a century, are of no use in this domain. Examples of the role of soil forming processes on trace element contents in ...

Global environmental changes affect not only the aboveground but also the belowground components of ecosystems. The effects of seasonal drought and air warming on the genus level richness of Collembola, and on the abundance and biomass of the community of Collembola and mites were studied in an acidic and a calcareous forest soil in a model oak-ecosystem experiment (the Querco experiment) at th...

Depth of frost penetration is one of the main indices in agriculture, civil and transportation engineering. Soil temperature is a function of several factors including: topography, solar radiation, air temperature, moisture content and other physical properties of soil such as thermal capacity, coefficient of heat conductivity, and specific heat. The main objective of the present paper is to de...

nowadays, one of the greatest energy consumption sources in the world is recognized as hvac systems, which are used vastly not only for industrial productions but also for creating comfort condition in dwellings. since beginning of warm or cold season, we will need a source of energy to reach desirable thermal conditions inside a building. also, earth is naturally a great thermal source, which ...

The aim of this article is to present a sort of state of the art from a soil classification point of view. How far are soils from their original natural state? A few years ago, the two most important soil classification systems added a classification of anthropogenic soils. Even so, although the concept of anthropogenic soil differs slightly in the two systems, it is easy to recognize these soi...