Oxidation of sulfide-containing ores is the main cause of Acid Mine Drainage (AMD), which is an environmental problem associated with both the abandoned and active mines. Iron-bearing sulfide minerals can be oxidized and form mine waters with high sulfate content, low pH, high electrical conductivity, high redox potential, and high concentrations of iron, aluminum, and other heavy metals. In th...

In Inner Mongolia, steppe grasslands face desertification or degradation because of human over activity. One of the reasons for this condition is that croplands have been abandoned after inappropriate agricultural management. The soils in these croplands present heterogeneous environments in which conditions affecting microbial growth and diversity fluctuate widely in space and time. In this st...

The Chinese Loess Plateau region has long been suffering from serious soil erosion. Thus, large-scale afforestation has continued during the past decades in order to control soil erosion. Afforestation can dramatically alter nutrient cycles, affect soil-carbon storage, and change hydrology. However, it is unknown how afforestation influences species diversity of the soil seed bank and understor...

This study was carried out for the purpose of investigating the issue of tailings dams as a potential source of contamination by trace elements in soils at the Sidi Bou Othmane mine in the Marrakech Region, Morocco. Soil samples taken from depths of up to 15 cm and within a radius of 50 m from the tailings dams, were analyzed for Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn using atomic absorption spectrometry. Average c...

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Human-driven land-use changes increasingly threaten biodiversity. In agricultural ecosystems, abandonment of former farmlands constitutes a major land-use shift. We examined the relationships between areas in which agriculture has been abandoned and the distribution records of threatened plant species across Japan. We selected 23 plant species that are currently identified as threatened but wer...

in agroforestry landscapes, land use, and the associated management practices exert strong impacts upon soil organic carbon stocks. data on the soil organic carbon were collected for different land-use types within a small watershed, el salado, located in lanjarón (se spain). eight land-use types namely: farmland planted in olive, almond, and cereals; forest with pinus halepensis mill. and pinu...

The kind of land use and intensity of its change is considered as important desertification indices in different models. Land use change is one of the main anthropogenic factors in the desertification. The current research was carried out around Imam Khomeini airport, with an area of 32000 km2, in order to evaluate mentioned area's land use changes effects during 1955-2003 on desertification. T...