Some species of centipedes and millipedes inhabit upper soil layers exclusively and are not recorded by pitfall trapping. Because of their sensitivity to soil conditions, they can be sampled quantitatively for evaluation of soil conditions. Soil samples are heavy to transport and their processing is time consuming, and such sampling leads to disturbance of the soil surface which land-owners do ...

one and two dimensional contaminant transport by pure diffusion through single layer of fine grained soil was investigated using one and two dimensional laboratory models. these models simulates a simple hydrogeologic situation underneath a solid waste landfill comprising a fine grained soil overlying a bed rock. sodium chloride solution was sued as a contaminant source above a compacted clayey...

With China's rapid economic development, the reduction in arable land has emerged as one of the most prominent problems in the nation. The long-term dynamic monitoring of arable land quality is important for protecting arable land resources. An efficient practice is to select optimal sample points while obtaining accurate predictions. To this end, the selection of effective points from a dense ...

Agricultural producers require knowledge of soil water at plant rooting depths,while many remote sensing studies have focused on surface soil water or mechanisticmodels that are not easily parameterized. We developed site-specific empirical models topredict spring soil water content for two Montana ranches. Calibration data sample sizeswere based on the estimated variability of soil water and t...

Soil data users in The Netherlands were inventoried for current and future data needs. Prioritized data needs were used to design the Netherlands Soil Sampling programme (NSSP) as a framework containing 3 groups of related projects: map upgrading, map updating and upgrading of pedotransfer functions. In each one group, the sampling design, performance criteria and optimal sample size were defin...

Since 1989 and until the summer of this year, all soil testing laboratories in Iowa and the USA dried soil samples at 35 to 40 oC (95 to 104 oF) and ground them before analysis for potassium (K), phosphorus (P), and other nutrients. Since early fall, however, a laboratory that began operations in Iowa is using testing procedures that involve no soil sample drying, and another laboratory operati...

A computer-controlled, automated sample collection from a 0.5-m lysimeter, designed to give superior temporal and spatial resolution for monitoring the movement of chemical tracers through a large undisturbed soil block, is described. The soil block, 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 m, was monitored for saturation using eight time domain reflectometry probes. Rainfall was applied at approximately 1600 ml h(-1) ...

We tried to quantify the ecotoxicity of three industrial soil samples contaminated by different metals, using the Collembolan Folsomia candida as a biological model and mortality, growth and reproduction as parameters. The observed ecotoxicities are rather normal for the first such soil sample (aluminum factory) but are high for the second sample (ore treatment) and relatively low for the third...

The distribution of rare earth elements (REE) in a pooled soil sample collected from Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, China, was screened by a five-step sequential extraction procedure coupled with ICP-MS determination after preconcentration of REE and removal of the matrix by extraction with 1-phenyl-3-methyl-4-benzoyl-5-pyrazolone (HPMBP). The results showed that the distribution of REE in the dif...

ABSTRACT Background: The radiological impact of the use of phosphate fertilizers in soil is due to the internal irradiation of the lung by the alpha particles, short lived radon-thoron progeny and the external irradiation of the body by gamma rays emitted from radionuclides in situ. This paper describes the results of gamma spectrometric measurements of the concentration ...