Background, Aims, and Scope. Historically, built areas were ignored in soil mapping and in studies of soil formation and behaviour. It is now recognized that these areas, and therefore their soils, are of prime importance to human populations. Another trend is the large increase in reclaimed lands and new uses for old industrial areas. In several countries there are active projects to map such ...

The soil quality concept evolved throughout the 1990s in response to increased global emphasis on sustainable land use and with a holistic focus emphasizing that sustainable soil management requires more than soil erosion control. The concept includes two areas of emphasis—education and assessment—both based soundly on principles of soil science. Soil quality test kits, farmer-based scorecards,...

Plant growth responses to resources may be an important mechanism that influences species' distributions, coexistence, and community structure. Irradiance is considered the most important resource for seedling growth in the understory of wet tropical forests, but multiple soil nutrients and species have yet to be examined simultaneously with irradiance under field conditions. To identify potent...

Soil erosion implications on future food security are gaining global attention because in many areas worldwide there is an imbalance between soil loss and its subsequent deposition. Soil erosion is a complex phenomenon affected by many factors such as climate, topography and land cover (in particular forest resources, natural vegetation and agriculture) while directly influencing water sediment...

there are various methods and models for land evaluation. these methods are classified according to the number of used resources. the best resources capabilities or potentials and land use can be found by analyzing one of the main resources, in the lands close relations to ecologic resources exist. soil has a great potential for introducing the studied region specifications. hence, it challenge...

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service State Soil Geographic (STATSGO) database contains general soils information, but data available in STATSGO cannot be readily extracted nor parameterized to support regional environmental quality modeling. As such, each user must individually and repeatedly process data in STATSGO to obtain necessary soil properties. The objective of this study was...

Ahmed Douaik1, Marc van Meirvenne2 and Tibor Tóth3,4 1Research Unit on Environment and Conservation of Natural Resources, National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA), Rabat, 2Department of Soil Management, Ghent University, Ghent, 3Department of Soil Science, Research Institute for Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Budapest, 4Rural, Water and Ecosystem Resources Unit, Institute fo...

Plant phenology, the timing of plant growth and development, is changing in response to global climate change. Changing temperature, soil moisture, nitrogen availability, light, and elevated CO(2) are all likely to affect plant phenology. Alteration of plant phenology by global climate change may alter the ability of plants to acquire soil resources (water and nutrients) by altering the timing ...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Ireland is required under section 75 of the Environmental Protection Agency Act, 1992 to specify and publish quality objectives in relation to any environmental medium which the Agency considers reasonable and desirable, for the purposes of environmental protection. Soil, air and water are generally seen as the three main environmental compartments t...