The popularity of low cost, lightweight, and environmentally affable masonry unit in building industry carries the need to investigate more flexible and adaptable brick component as well as to retain the requirements confirmed in building standards. In this study, potential use of local materials used as lightweight building materials in solving the economic problems of housing has been investi...

One of the problems in the production of microbial preparations for agriculture is the maintenance of bacterial viability. One of the methods of improving the viability is an immobilization in the carrier material. Immobilization of plant growth-promoting bacteria Streptomyces griseoviridis and Azotobacter sp. in the peat and experimental ceramic granules was studied. Bacterial viability in ste...

The effect of a variety factors on the survival of several rhizobia strains on inoculants and inoculated seeds has been evaluated. Since the rhizobia strains showed different cell-density-evolution patterns on peat-based inoculants and on inoculated seeds, several inoculant formulations with highly effective Rhizobium/Bradyrhizobium strains (for Lupinus, Hedysarum, Phaseolus and Glycine max.) w...

Members of the bacterial phylum Planctomycetes inhabit various aquatic and terrestrial environments. In this study, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was applied to assess the abundance and depth distribution of these bacteria in nine different acidic wetlands of Northern Russia. Planctomycetes were most abundant in the oxic part of the wetland profiles. The respective cell numbers were...

Isolates of Fusarium were discovered in peat soil samples collected from peat swamp forest, waterlogged peat soil, and peat soil from oil palm plantations. Morphological characteristics were used to tentatively identify the isolates, and species confirmation was based on the sequence of translation elongation factor-1α (TEF-1α) and phylogenetic analysis. Based on the closest match of Basic Loca...

one of the most important steps of agaricus bisporus production is casing. in this step a layer of soil is added on top of compost. peat is the most suitable casing soil for a. bisporus production. the lack of peat in iran is one of the major problems in a. bisporus production for mushroom producers. it seems that peat can be replaced by spent mushroom compost (smc). in order to study the possi...

To accommodate major civil engineering projects in or in the vicinity of peatlands, it is essential to stabilise peat deposits. On the other hand, the accumulation of waste tyres in recent decades has caused environmental problems around the world. An effective remedy for both issues is to use scrap tyre material to stabilise problematic peat soils. This article reports an experimental investig...

In this study, we test whether the δ(13)C and δ(15)N in a peat profile are, respectively, linked to the recent dilution of atmospheric δ(13)CO(2) caused by increased fossil fuel combustion and changes in atmospheric δ(15)N deposition. We analysed bulk peat and Sphagnum fuscum branch C and N concentrations and bulk peat, S. fuscum branch and Andromeda polifolia leaf δ(13)C and δ(15)N from a 30-c...

Forestry harvesting on peats is known to result in significant losses of soil phosphorus (P) to adjacent waters, and the issue is becoming an increasingly serious concern as peatland forest stocks mature and reach harvestable age. One potential solution could be the use of low-cost P recovery techniques based on the chemical precipitation and/or adsorption of the dissolved fraction of soil P, w...

11 Peatland ecosystems accumulate thick organic soil layers because plant production exceeds decomposition throughout the entire organic soil column (Fig. 1). Peatlands cover only about 2–3% of the Earth’s land surface but store around 25% of the world’s soil carbon1. They are most abundant at northern high latitudes (Fig. 2a), where they cover roughly 4,000,000 km2 of land1 and store an estima...