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Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata) plantations cover over 12Mha in the southeast provinces of China. The traditional conditioning of fields of this conifer involves the slash-and-burn practice. As a result of this practice, pyrogenic carbon (PyC) is produced by the incomplete combustion of organic matter; this includes a continuum of materials ranging from partially charred biomass and charcoal...
Soil evaporation is the main route of soil moisture loss and often exceeds precipitation in the arid and semi-arid regions of the Loess Plateau. This study was conducted to determine whether biochar addition could reduce soil evaporation in drylands. We measured the evaporative loss in five typical topsoils (0–20cm) from the Loess Plateau, Shaanxi, China, that differed in texture (Eum-Orthic Anthrosol,...
The characteristics of runoff and sediment under different grass strip patterns are important in the study of the mechanisms regulating vegetation in convex hillslope. In this work, using a physical model of a convex hillslope as a carrier, it is analyzed the characteristics of runoff and sediment under five grass strip patterns, as well as regulation mechanism of grass strips on soil erosion through...
Contamination of urban lake sediments by heavy metals is a major threat to environmental safety and human health due to its high toxicity and persistence. This paper aims to examine the feasibility of using visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (VNIRS) to rapidly quantify heavy metals (i.e., As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb and Zn) in urban lake sediments. Lake sediment samples (n=103) were...
In this paper the storage potential of soils within a heterogeneous structured hummocky young moraine region for organic carbon is discussed with respect to climate change and erosion. Erosion is discussed to be either a global terrestrial CO2 sink or a source. In hummocky young moraine regions of North East Germany water and tillage erosion are steadily changing factors since the beginning of arable...
In natural ecosystems, soil respiration is one of the important components of carbon emission into the atmosphere – CO2 efflux. Soil CO2 efflux has both temporal (due to temperature and moisture changes) and spatial variability, which can be explained by different types of soil, soil use and management, as well as the influence of vegetation on CO2 efflux. The aim of this study was to measure the...
Raindrop splash is considered to be the first step in soil erosion, and it is also a contribution to such erosion. Aggregate breakdown due to raindrop splash causes crusting and soil erosion. In this study, the micro-characteristics of soil aggregate breakdown under the action of three sizes of raindrops were examined using synchrotron-based X-ray micro-computed tomography (SR-μ CT). The results showed...
Soil microrelief has been found to influence processes of water infiltration, runoff and erosion. However, its mathematical description remains poorly understood. The primary objective of this study was to explore changes in soil microrelief and its effect on surface runoff and sediment yield. The associated experiments were based on multifractal analysis (MFA) under a simulated rainfall series in...
Hydromorphology is a matter of water and sediment. This constitutes the study of hydrological processes, as well as of the soil and streambed erosion processes imperative. This study presents two different models aiming at continuous simulations of hydromorphological processes at the basin scale. The first model is a Composite Mathematical Model (CMM), consisting of three submodels: a rainfall-runoff...
Soil detachment is one of the most important processes of soil erosion, as it is of great significance for the prevention and treatment of soil erosion in areas subject to seasonal freeze-thaw. However, little research on soil detachment capacity (SDC) during the thawing period has been carried out and this process remains unclear. In order to elucidate the effects of slope, flow discharge and freeze-thaw...
Lovětín was a medieval village located in the Bohemian-Moravian Upland (Czech Republic). It existed approximately between the 14th and the 16th century and was comprised of up to 20 farmsteads. Arable farming based on a short-fallow cultivation system was its main means of subsistence. The fields of the village consisted of two main field areas (128 and 77ha) and six smaller field areas (up to 8ha)...
Dissolved and particulate organic carbon (DOC, POC) and nitrogen (DN, PN) are important constituents and indicators of the C and N dynamics in forested ecosystems, but little is known about fire effects on the fluxes of these elements. Biweekly fluxes at three different soil depths (organic layer O, mineral soil A, mineral soil B) were measured with zero-tension lysimeters before and after (prescribed)...
Soil physicochemical properties can be regarded as an important tool to assess soil health, which further form a base for biological activity in soil. These soil physicochemical properties are comparable in identical land-uses and so reflect similar soil microbial properties. However, the changes in land-use types and their effects on soil physicochemical and microbial properties are largely debated...
Soil respiration (Rs), conventionally considered as net soil CO2 flux, is an important link in the terrestrial carbon cycle. However, existing estimates of Rs in drylands may be erroneous, because of the abiotic soil CO2 flux. This may seriously hamper our understanding of the carbon cycle of desert ecosystems. In this study, we monitored CO2 flux of natural and sterilized soils, and obtained the...
Morphology of podzol profiles can be used to improve our understanding of soil formation and degradation processes. The morphology of a podzol chronosequence was studied for a 1800m long cliff perpendicular to the coastline at the southern coast of the Island Ilha Comprida (São Paulo, Brazil). The large variation in hydrological conditions with time (surfaces with ages from 6000 to 300yrs BP) and...
Soil respiration (Rs) represents the largest CO2 efflux to the atmosphere of terrestrial ecosystems. The regular alternation of wet and dry soil strips prevailing in irrigated orchards is a singular case-study among ecosystems as it may help to understand the impact of the spatial variability of abiotic factors on soil respiration in orange orchards having contrasting age and structural heterogeneity...
At the southernmost Andes Mountains, the Martial cirque glacier has retreated 2km in distance and 500m in elevation since the mid-Holocene. This study examines soil properties, processes, and classification in relation to soil age and elevation. Soils were sampled at elevations from 430 to 925m a.s.l. on drifts periodically influenced by volcanic ash that represent five age classes: 5.0 to 6.0kyrBP...
Fly ash and bottom ash from thermal power stations are industrial wastes which are susceptible to weathering in the environment. First manifestations of transformations occur immediately after deposition of ashes in a disposal site and they continue in technogenic soils (Technosols) developing from the ashes on surfaces of such sites. Technosols developed from bituminous coal and lignite ashes in...
Natural concentrations of trace elements are necessary for assessing trace elements contamination affected by anthropogenic activities in soils. This study was conducted to establish background concentrations of cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb) and zinc (Zn) in 50 unpolluted native soils with a total of 100 soil samples (surface...
Land cover of river basins has undergone multiple modifications and conversions as a result of various pressures on ecosystems. This study calibrates and validates the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for determining the hydrological response to land-cover changes in the Lower-Middle São Francisco River sub-basin (LMSFR), Brazil. The SWAT model was calibrated with 1993–1994 data from hydrological...
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