Livestock waste composts with minimum inorganic fertilizer as a soil amendment in low-input intensive farming are a feasible agricultural practice to improve soil fertility and productivity and to mitigate soil degradation. The key benefits of the practice rely on the activities of soil microorganisms. However, the role of different livestock composts [composted cattle manure (CCM) vs. composte...

the experiment was conducted to study the effect of treatment of rice straw with urea and a urease containing midden soil on the chemical composition of treated rice straw, feed intake of the animals, nutrients digestibility, body weight gain, feed conversion efficiency and overall economy of feeding for a period of 105 days. twelve indigenous growing cattle (live weight 130.00±1.67 kg) were se...

The mixed oak-pine ecosystems in the southern Appalachians are in decline because of a combination of drought and southern pine-beetle infestation. A commonly applied prescription for restoration of these degraded sites has been to fell all vegetation, allow it to dry, and conduct a site-preparation burn. However, there is little information on the midand long-term influences of this prescripti...

Soil treatment of wastewater has the potential to achieve high purification efficiency, yet the understanding and predictability of purification with respect to removal of viruses and other pathogens is limited. Research has been completed to quantify the removal of virus and bacteria through the use of microbial surrogates and conservative tracers during controlled experiments with three-dimen...

The buildup of phosphorus (P) in the soil is a major factor limiting the operating life of a wastewater land treatment system. In this study, we evaluated changes of chemical properties, P profiles, and adsorption isotherms in the soils of a Muskegon wastewater land treatment system, which has received wastewater for approximately 30 years. It was found that the pH in the 15-cm topsoil increase...

We studied the responses of soil fauna to a simulated nitrogen deposition in nursery experimental plots in Subtropical China. Dissolved NH4NO3 was applied to the soil by spraying twice per month for 16 months, starting in January 2003 with treatments of 0, 5, 10, 15 and 30 gN/(m2 x a). Soil fauna was sampled after 6, 9, 13 and 16 months of treatment in three soil depths (0-5 cm, 5-10 cm, 10-15 ...

the effect of 10-year continuous saffron cultivation on physical and chemical properties of a silty clay loam soil was investigated in a research farm of college of agriculture, shiraz university, shiraz (52 º 33ʹ e longitude and 29º 36ʹ n latitude), iran. this farm was irrigated with different regimes (100% of saffron's potential evapotranspiration (etp), 75%etp, 50%etp) including rain fed tre...

Appropriate fertilizer application is an important management practice to improve soil fertility and quality in the red soil regions of China. In the present study, we examined the effects of five fertilization treatments [these were: no fertilizer (CK), rice straw return (SR), chemical fertilizer (NPK), organic manure (OM) and green manure (GM)] on soil pH, soil organic carbon (SOC), total nit...

Two water treatment sludges (WTS-A, WTS-B), two red muds (RM), and red gypsum (RG), all rich in iron oxy-hydroxides, were added to a soil highly polluted with As and Cu at 2% (w/w) to reduce metal bioavailability. Because the amendments increased soil pH to approximately 6, a lime treatment to the same pH and an unamended treatment were included for comparison. All the amendments had significan...

The biogeographic distribution of plant species is inherently associated with the plasticity of physiological adaptations to environmental variation. For semi-arid shrublands with a legacy of saline soils, characterization of soil water-tolerant shrub species is necessary for habitat restoration given future projection of increased drought magnitude and persistence in these ecosystems. Five dom...