This study assessed the diversity and composition of bacterial communities in four different soils (human-, penguin-, seal-colony impacted soils and pristine soil) in the Fildes Region (King George Island, Antarctica) using 454 pyrosequencing with bacterial-specific primers targeting the 16S rRNA gene. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia were abundant phyla in alm...

The spatial extent of the transported materials from three road types was studied in forest soil and vegetative communities in Vermont. Hypotheses were two-fold: 1) soil chemical concentrations above background environment would reflect traffic volume and road type (highway>2-lane paved>gravel), and 2) plant communities close to the road and near roads with greater traffic will be disturbance-t...

Foam injection is becoming a standard conditioning agent when tunnelling with an earth-pressure balanced shield, resulting in an increasing interest in this technique. The technique is mostly based on empirical rules and experience. To be able to determine what foam and how may foam has to be injected for different soils, it is necessary to know the mechanical parameters of the foam-water-soil ...

In this study, we exploit dye patterns to identify flow types in macroporous soils as a step forward from using dye patterns simply as qualitative pictures that illustrate preferential flow. Dye tracer experiments at different irrigation rates and initial soil moisture conditions were carried out on three hillslope sites. Several vertical and horizontal soil sections were prepared after each ex...

Recognition is growing that besides ungulates, small vertebrate and invertebrate herbivores are important drivers of grassland functioning. Even though soil microarthropods play key roles in several soil processes, effects of herbivores-especially those of smaller body size-on their communities are not well understood. Therefore, we progressively excluded large, medium and small vertebrate and ...

The potential dependence of virus populations on soil types was examined by electron microscopy, and the total abundance of virus particles in four soil types was similar to that previously observed in soil samples. The four soil types examined differed in the relative abundances of four morphological groups of viruses. Machair, a unique type of coastal soil in western Scotland and Ireland, dif...

Soil thermal conductivity is significantly influenced by saturation and dry density. In this paper, a family of empirical correlations are presented which relate soil thermal conductivity to saturation for five soil types, namely, gravel, sand, silt, clay and peat, in both the frozen and unfrozen states. These correlations were developed from a soil thermal conductivity database which was const...

Large-scale vegetation restoration in China’s Loess Plateau has been initiated by the central government for controlling soil andwater losses in the past three decades. However, there is virtually no guidance for plant species selection for the restoration purpose. We investigated the effects of planting trees and shrubs, land-use conversions from croplands to pastures and native grasslands on ...

The Fenwick can and Schuiling centrifuge are widely used to extract nematode cysts from soil samples. The comparative efficiencies of these two methods during cyst extraction have not been determined for different soil types under different cyst densities. Such information is vital for statutory laboratories that must choose a method for routine, high-throughput soil monitoring. In this study, ...