An improved chromatographic assay for muramic acid which is sufficiently sensitive for marine sandy sediments is described; it involves acid hydrolysis, thin-layer chromatography, and gas-liquid chromatography.

Sandy beaches comprise one of the most important coastal resources worldwide, providing habitats to threatened vertebrates, supporting underappreciated invertebrate biodiversity, and delivering crucial ecosystem services and economic benefits to mankind. Monitoring of the natural resource condition of sandy beaches and assessments of the ecological impacts of human disturbance are, however, rar...

CONTEXT Evacuation and shelter-in-place decision making for hospitals is complex, and existing literature contains little information about how these decisions are made in practice. OBJECTIVE To describe decision-making processes and identify determinants of acute care hospital evacuation and shelter-in-place during Hurricane Sandy. DESIGN Semistructured interviews were conducted from March...

The addition of organic amendments to soil increases soil organic matter content and stimulates soil microbial activity. Thus, processes affecting herbicide fate in the soil should be affected. The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of olive oil production industry organic waste (alperujo) on soil sorption-desorption, degradation, and leaching of diuron [3-(3,4-dichlorophenyl)...

S.A. Shahid et al. (eds.), Developments in Soil Salinity Assessment and Reclamation: Innovative Thinking and Use of Marginal Soil and Water Resources in Irrigated Agriculture, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5684-7_14, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Geographical distribution of soil salinity, alkalinity, calcicity, soil texture, and organic matter (grid system-log distance of ...

To determine the relationship between changes in soil physical properties due to tillage and growth of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) seedlings, we measured soil moisture and penetration resistance for a range of tillage treatments on two Upper Coastal Plain sites in Georgia and correlated these measurements to the growth of individual seedlings. The five tillage treatments were: no-till (NT), ...

Poultry litter applications to land have been based on crop N requirements, resulting in application of P in excess of plant requirements, which may cause degradation of water quality in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The effect of litter source (the Delmarva Peninsula and Moorefield, West Virginia) and composting of poultry litter on N mineralization and availability of P in two soil types (san...

Sandy beaches are the prime sites for human recreation and underpin many coastal economies and developments. In many coastal areas worldwide, beach recreation relies on the use of off-road vehicles (ORVs) driven on the shore. Yet, the use of ORVs is not universally embraced due to social conflicts with other beach user groups and putative environmental consequences of vehicle traffic on sandy s...

A field study was conducted to determine nitrogen (N) mineralization from broiler litter (EL) in two Coastal Plain soils of differing texture, sandy (Tifton loamy sand) or clayey (Greenville sandy clay loam). These soils represented the broad range in surface textures conmlOnly found in soils used {or agricultural production in the southeastern Coastal Plain. Published protocols used for the st...