Ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and ammonia-oxidizing archaea are commonly found together in soils, yet the factors influencing their relative distribution and activity remain unclear. We examined archaeal and bacterial amoA gene distribution, and used a novel bioassay to assess archaeal and bacterial contributions to nitrification potentials in soils spanning a range of land uses (forest, pasture, ...

Understanding indigenous knowledge of soils has come to be seen as essential in understanding the local realities of farmer and may be critical for the success or failure of agricultural development. However, little effort has been made to capture the indigenous knowledge of upland farmers in northern Laos where many projects are working to develop sustainable crop production systems as alterna...

Soils formed in loess are evidence of both relict and buried landscapes developed on Pliocene-to-latest Pleistocene basalt flows of the Cima volcanic field in the eastern Mojave Desert, California. The characteristics of these soils change systematically and as functions of the age and surface morphology of the lava flow. Four distinct phases of soil development are recognized: phase 1 weakly d...

Most studies on phosphorus cycle in the natural environment focused on phosphates, with limited data available for the reduced phosphine (PH3). In this paper, matrix-bound phosphine (MBP), gaseous phosphine fluxes and phosphorus fractions in the soils were investigated from a penguin colony, a seal colony and the adjacent animal-lacking tundra and background sites. The MBP levels (mean 200.3 ng...

Serpentine soils impose physiological stresses that limit plant establishment and diversity. The degree to which serpentine soils entail constraints on other organisms is, however, poorly understood. Here, I investigate the effect of serpentine soils on ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi by conducting a reciprocal transplant experiment, where serpentine and nonserpentine ECM fungal communities were cu...

The leaching behaviors of enrofloxacin (ENR), a fluoroquinolone group antibiotic, in three different standard soils, namely sandy, loamy sand and sandy loam were investigated according to OECD guideline 312. In addition, the effects of tenside, sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (DBS) on the mobility of ENR in two different soils were studied. The mobility of ENR in all three standard soils was ver...

Previous studies have established in vivo-in vitro correlations (IVIVC) between arsenic (As) relative bioavailability (RBA) and bioaccessibility in contaminated soils. However, their ability to predict As-RBA in soils outside the models is unclear. In this study, As bioaccessibility and As-RBA in 12 As-contaminated soils (22.2-4172 mg kg(-1) As) were measured using five assays (SBRC, IVG, DIN, ...

The concentrations of As and Zn in 100 georeferenced soils uniformly distributed throughout the area affected by the spill from the Aznalcóllar mine (April 1998) were analysed at three depths (0– 10, 10–30, and 30–50 cm) and on four dates (autumn–winter 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2004). For an estimate of the geochemical background, 30 unaffected soils near the edge of the spill were also analysed a...

What soils are best for grapes? The best grape soils are deep, well-drained loams, free from high concentrations of alkali, boron, or other toxic materials. Deeper soils produce the heaviest crops and are preferred for raisins, common wine grapes, and some varieties of table grapes. However, grapes are adapted to a wide variety of soil types and can be grown successfully on soils not suitable f...