Reduced tillage methods for field crop production result in less disruption of soil structure and often increased amounts of crop residue maintained on the soil surface. The combination of these two factors produces increased surface soil aggregation. This study was conducted in the field and within pots to determine whether surface residue by itself improves soil aggregation within a short per...

Soils play a key role in the global carbon cycle. They can be a source or a sink of carbon and in ̄uence CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. In order to calculate the carbon budget of a region, the effect of soil management practices on carbon sequestration in soils needs to be quanti®ed. Objectives of this experiment were to determine: (i) the effects of ridge till, plow till and no-till on t...

to study the effects of scale and tillage management on variability of soil properties in adjacent lands of different tillage type, soil sampling was performed linearly along contour line from the middle position of slope with 5 m intervals. in overall, 45 soil samples were collected from a field with conventional up-down tillage and 40 samples from an adjacent filed with contour tillage. soil ...

Management of plant litter or crop residues in agricultural fields is an important consideration for reducing soil erosion and increasing soil organic C. Current methods of quantifying crop residue cover are inadequate for characterizing the spatial variability of residue cover within fields or across large regions. Our objectives were to evaluate several spectral indices for measuring crop res...

The objective of this study was to investigate how the relationships between bacterial communities and organic C (SOC) in topsoil (0-5 cm) are affected by tillage practices [conventional intensive tillage (CT) or no-tillage (NT)] and straw-returning methods [crop straw returning (S) or removal (NS)] under a rice-wheat rotation in central China. Soil bacterial communities were determined by high...