The study used 276 urban soils and 447 rural soils collected from in and around the UK town of Northampton and focussed on the fractionation of Pb. The Pb fractionation obtained from total element data was compared to the fractionation of Pb in a subset of 10 urban soils obtained using a sequential extraction method. The fractionation of the Pb from the total element data and from the sequentia...

Soils are the basic and most important resources of any people. Differences in soil’s physical and chemical properties are related to the spatial distribution of land uses. Most of these human activities generate toxic substances that are transported considerable distances away from source and become accumulated in soils, sediment, water bodies and fisheries. Urban soils are largely affected by...

The effects of urbanization on soil structure can be extensive. Infiltration of rain water through soils can be greatly reduced, plus the benefits of infiltration and biofiltration devices can be severely jeopardized. Our research group (along with others), have been studying disturbed urban soils for several decades, both in the laboratory and in the field. The effects of compaction on infiltr...

Sequential extraction analysis was used to characterize the geochemical partitioning of Pb in roadside soils of the Detroit, MI area. Four soil profiles (10, 30, 60, and 100 m from road) were sampled at 15-cm intervals to a depth of 75 cm at each of five locations along an urban-rural transect. The observed concentrations increase with increasing traffic volume and proximity to the highway, ind...

urban expansion and agriculture intensification are relevant drivers in land degradation (ld)processes in europe due to net loss of land, soil sealing, landscape fragmentation and other negative effects on the environment. this paper explores changes (or “trajectories” of change) in land use and cover (lulc) and their relationship with the consumption of soils in emilia-romagna (northern italy)...

a r t i c l e i n f o Layers cemented by iron and manganese have been observed in soils of putting greens at golf courses throughout the USA. They result in reduced water infiltration, saturated conditions in the root zone, and a decline in turfgrass density and quality. The physical and chemical properties of these layers have not been investigated nor described in detail. Here we present a de...

Urban sprawl is one of the main problems that threaten the limited highly fertile land in the Nile Delta of Egypt. In this research, satellite images Landsat TM 1993, ETM+ 2001 and Egypt Sat-1, 2009 has been used to study the urban sprawl and its impact on agricultural land in Qalubiya Governorate. Maximum likelihood supervised classification and post-classification change detection techniques ...

The increasing popularity of urban agriculture as a method of localizing food systems has created a mounting need to address soil pollution in urban farms. Lead is an especially pervasive pollutant in urban soils with a number of detrimental health effects. Phytoremediation, the use of plants to extract or degrade pollutants, has shown promise for cleaning up leadcontaminated soils, yet its pot...

The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) contamination of urban, agricultural and forest soil samples was investigated from samples obtained in the surroundings of Valasske Mezirici. Valasske Mezirici is a town located in the north-east mountainous part of the Czech Republic, where a coal tar refinery is situated. 16 PAHs listed in the US EPA were investigated. Organic oxidizable carbon was al...

Recent work from our labs demonstrated that a metabolite(s) from the soil bacterium Streptomyces venezuelae caused dopaminergic neurodegeneration in Caenorhabditis elegans and human neuroblastoma cells. To evaluate the capacity for metabolite production by naturally occurring streptomycetes in Alabama soils, Streptomyces were isolated from soils under different land uses (agriculture, undevelop...