Soils are viewed in the context of ecosystem services, soil processes and properties, and key attributes and constraints. The framework used is based on the premise that the natural capital of soils that underlies ecosystem services is primarily determined by three core soil properties: texture, mineralogy, and soil organic matter. Up-todate descriptions and geographical distribution of soil or...

expansive behavior is usually observed in soils, which contain fractions of clay minerals in their composition. water absorption of clay particles and change of natural water content of soil up to plastic limit and down to shrinkage limit will cause significant volume change in expansive soils and will result in severe damages to the structures, buildings and foundations. swelling potential is ...

In this paper, a physically based dielectric model in microwave band for moist soils is developed to account for both the temperature and granulometric mineralogy of the soil. The generalized refractive mixing dielectric model (GRMDM) previously developed by V. L. Mironov et al. was used as a mean to determine the spectroscopic parameters for 5 soils which complex dielectric constant spectra we...

The biological stability of soil organic carbon (SOC) is influenced by the chemical structure of SOC and the existence of various mechanisms of protection offered by soil minerals and their spatial arrangement within the soil matrix (Baldock and Skjemstad, 2000). In addition to defining the potential availability of SOC to decomposer organisms living in soils, the chemical structure of SOC also...

Improved predictions on the fate of organic pollutants in surface environments require a better understanding of the underlying sorption mechanisms that control their uptake by soils. In this study, we monitored sorption of nine aromatic compounds with varying physicochemical properties (hydrophobicity, electron-donor/acceptor ability and polarity), including two polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon...

the potassium pools of five major physiographic units of urmia region in western azarbaijan province were studied to investigate the distribution of k forms as a function of clay mineralogy and physiographic units. for this, soil samples from different horizons of ten pedons were selected and analyzed for physiochemical properties, mineralogy of clay fraction, and forms of k. analyses of xrd re...

Forest soils represent a significant pool for carbon sequestration and storage, but the factors controlling soil carbon cycling are not well constrained. We compared soil carbon dynamics at five broadleaf forests in the Eastern US that vary in climate, soil type, and soil ecology: two sites at the University of Michigan Biological Station (MI-Coarse, sandy; MI-Fine, loamy); Bartlett Experimenta...