This study compared the granulometric properties, mineralogical composition and concentrations of major and trace element oxides of commonly ingested soils (geophagic soil) collected from different countries with a view of understanding how varied they may be in these properties and to understand the possible health implications of ingesting them. Soil samples were collected from three differen...

The bacterial endophytic communities residing within roots of maize (Zea mays L.) plants cultivated by a sustainable management in soils from the Quechua maize belt (Peruvian Andes) were examined using tags pyrosequencing spanning the V4 and V5 hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA. Across four replicate libraries, two corresponding to sequences of endophytic bacteria from long time maize-culti...

counties (Torrent et al., 1980), and in soils formed in late The morphologic development of soils on marine terraces is a function of terrace age and geomorphic evolution. In this study, inter­ relationships between terrace landscape evolution and pedogenic sil­ ica cementation were investigated. Soil morphology, micromorphol­ ogy, selective dissolution, penetration resistance, and hydraulic co...

Metals in bed-load sediments are multi-source, namely: weathered rocks, metals discharged directly into river, and eroded riparian soils. Contaminated flood plains represent storage system for releasing pollutants to rivers. An essential first step towards modeling this storage is to investigate the relationship. The objective of this study is compare the composition (CaCO3, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn,...

The process of P release and transfer becomes more complex in environments strongly disturbed by human activities. In this paper, purple soils (about 37.8% of total soils) from areas with different sea level elevations and land use were sampled in the Water Fluctuation Zone (WFZ) in the Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR) along the Yangzi River. This research investigated the P distribution characteri...

Methanogens typically occur in reduced anoxic environments. However, in recent studies it has been shown that many aerated upland soils, including desert soils also host active methanogens. Here we show that soil samples from high-altitude cold deserts in the western Himalayas (Ladakh, India) produce CH4 after incubation as slurry under anoxic conditions at rates comparable to those of hot dese...

To investigate the effect of sheep dung on soil carbon (C) sequestration, a 152 days incubation experiment was conducted with soils from two different Inner Mongolian grasslands, i.e. a Leymus chinensis dominated grassland representing the climax community (2.1% organic matter content) and a heavily degraded Artemisia frigida dominated community (1.3% organic matter content). Dung was collected...

The soils affected by the spill of a pyrite mine were analysed in 100 sampling points at three depths (0-10, 10-30, and 30-50 cm) in 1998 (after the tailings were removed), 1999 (after the cleaning of the highly contaminated areas), and 2004 (after the tilling of the upper 20-25 cm). The comparative study reveals that the removal of the tailings left a heterogeneous distribution pattern of the ...

In Canterbury land-use intensification, particularly irrigated dairy expansion, is occurring on stony soils. Concerns exist about the ability of these soils to sustain intensified land-use, while maintaining nutrient leaching within discharge limits. Environmental models consistently predict stony soils as having a high vulnerability to leaching under intensive land use, but there is little exp...