For the first time, soil core samples from the Jiuquan region have been analyzed for Pu isotopes for radioactive source identification and radiological assessment. The Jiuquan region is in downwind from the Lop Nor Chinese nuclear test (CNT) site. The high Pu inventories (13 to 546 Bq/m(2)) in most of the sampling locations revealed that this region was heterogeneously contaminated by the regio...

Evolution can occur on ecological time-scales, affecting community and ecosystem processes. However, the importance of evolutionary change relative to ecological processes remains largely unknown. Here, we analyse data from a long-term experiment in which we allowed plant populations to evolve for three generations in dry or wet soils and used a reciprocal transplant to compare the ecological e...

In this work a lipopeptide biosurfactant, obtained from an agro industrial residue, was used as washing agent to remove fluorene from soil. Soil extraction carried out with biosurfactants is more environmental friendly tan those extraction based on volatile solvents or chemical surfactants. Thus, in order to find the best operational conditions, the effect of soil loading and pH during batch so...

This study aimed at relating the abundance and diversity of invertebrate communities of urban soils to chemical and physical soil characteristics and to identify the taxa most sensitive or tolerant to soil stressors. The invertebrate community of five urban soils in Naples, Italy, was sampled. To assess soil quality invertebrate community indices (Shannon, Simpson, Menhinick and Pielou indices)...

More than four metres of core, covering almost 5000 years of deposition, were collected in a high ash minerogenic peat deposit located in the High Aldudes valley (Basque country), an area well known for its mineral abundance, exploited from Roman Times at least. Although minerogenic peatlands are not generally considered as the best archives to reconstruct past atmospheric metal deposition hist...

soil salinity affects ions concentrationss of plant tissues and this may alter the merits quality of medicinal plants. experiments were conducted during 2003 at the the isfahan university of technology campus, isfahan, iran, to assess the effects of five soil salinity levels (3.2, 3.6, 4.5, 5.4 and 7.5 ds m-1) on na, k, and ca contents of borage and echium. each plant species was studied in a s...

abstract surface soil shear strength is an effective parameter in soil erosion and runoff modeling, and known as soil erodibility index. this study was conducted to investigate and predict soil shear strength in central zagros region using multiple linear regressions (mlr). the study site was selected in rangeland and degraded-rangeland landuse with an area of 23562 ha. based on the maps of geo...

Based on an actual corrugated steel plate arch bridge, considering soil-structure interaction, by using the finite element program of ANSYS, a 2-D finite element model was set up to analyze the soil pressure and structural deformation under different load conditions in detail. Since this type of structure relies on the soil-structure interaction to share the load, as the structural parameters h...

GUO HC, WANG WB, LUO XH & WU XP. 2015. Characteristics of rhizosphere and bulk soil microbial communities in rubber plantations in Hainan Island, China. Phospholipid fatty acid analysis was used to investigate spatial variations in microbial communities of rhizosphere and bulk soil in rubber plantations in Hainan Island. Rhizosphere and bulk soil were collected from immature and mature rubber t...

In this study the origin, behaviour and fate of anthropogenic Pb in sandy roadside soils were assessed by measuring soil characteristics, Pb isotope composition and content. In 1991 and 2003 samples were taken at different depth intervals at approximately 8 and 75 m from two highways in The Netherlands. The Pb isotope composition of the litter layer ((206)Pb/(207)Pb=1.12-1.14) differs from the ...