The objective of this study is to investigate tungsten (W) contamination in soil and its enrichment in rice in the area of the world's largest and longest-operating W mines in China. Root zone soil and rice plants were sampled at 15 sites in the agricultural field adjacent to W mines and analyzed for Al, Fe, Mn, Sc, and W contents and W chemical forms in the soil samples and W contents in the r...

Accidental spillages or leakages of organic compound within the environment, released as non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL), result a widespread contamination of subsurface soils and groundwater. In such multi-phase flow system in porous media, interphase mass transfer mainly governs the overall transport processes that occur in the interface between the two fluid phases. Air-liquid interfacial ar...

The alluvial plain of the Ceyhan River (SE Turkey) has been populated since the Neolithic. In 1954, Marjory Veronica Seton-Williams described for this area several archeological mounds (höyük), which are the remains of ancient settlements. Today, according to the archeological research carried out in the area, some of these mounds result to have been leveled by agricultural activities. In this ...

Understanding the fates of soil hydrological processes and nitrogen (N) is essential for optimizing the water and N in a dryland crop system with the goal of obtaining a maximum yield. Few investigations have addressed the dynamics of dryland N and its association with the soil hydrological process in a freeze-thawing agricultural area. With the daily monitoring of soil water content and acquis...

Lunar soils form the "ground truth" for calibration and modeling of reflectance spectra for quantitative remote sensing. The Lunar Soil Characterization Consortium, a group of lunar sample and remote sensing scientists, has undertaken the extensive task of characterization of lunar soils, with respect o their mineralogical and chemical makeup. This endeavor is aimed at deciphering the effects o...

Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system aimed at sustainableproduction of safe food, environmental protection and maintenance of soil health. The objectiveof this study was to evaluate, in a period of organic transition, the effects of different organicfertilizers on wheat yield, grain quality and soil characteristics. The research was performedin an experimental farm ...

Mercury (Hg) stored in vegetation and soils is known to be released to the atmosphere during wildfires, increasing atmospheric stores and altering terrestrial budgets. Increased erosion and transport of sediments is well-documented in burned watersheds, both immediately post-fire and as the watershed recovers; however, understanding post-fire mobilization of soil Hg within burned watersheds rem...

Introduction: Since the return of the first lunar samples it has been well known that glass-welded aggregates (agglutinates) accumulate in lunar soil as the result of multiple processes, many of which are driven by micrometeorite impacts. The proportion of agglutinates increases with increasing exposure to the space environment, and for an individual soil the proportion of agglutinates also inc...

iii CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THESIS OUTLINE 1 CHAPTER 2: SURVEY OF GRAIN AMARANTH PRODUCTION AND SOIL PROPERTIES IN KAMULI DISTRICT OF UGANDA 48 CHAPTER 3: ORGANIC GRAIN AMARANTH ON-STATION EXPERIMENTS IN UGANDA 76 CHAPTER 4: ORGANIC GRAIN AMARANTH ON-FARM EXPERIMENTS IN UGANDA 139 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 176 APPENDIX I: AMARANTH SURVEY 187 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 189