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Sampling along the River Lahn, a major tributary to the River Rhine that flows through an agrarian region of west-central Germany, reveals that heavy metal pollution occurs outside major industrial regions and mined landscapes. Along a 60-km reach of the river between Marburg and Wetzlar, mean concentrations of Cu, Pb and Zn at depths of 5 and 15 cm in four floodplain transects were greater than background...
Excavations of Danish burial mounds dated to the South Scandinavian Early Bronze Age (1700-1000 BC) occasionally show thin iron pans encapsulating the interior of the mounds. When strongly cemented these pans can be classified as placic horizons. The encapsulated core was often wet and anaerobic and in Jutland well-preserved oaken log coffins with remnants of organic artefacts and human beings were...
Inappropriate land use is one of the main reasons for soil erosion and nutrient loss in the hilly loess area. In the Yangjuangou catchment, which has typical hill and gully topography, the effects of land use changes on soil erosion and the distribution of soil nutrients and moisture were studied at the three spatial scales of total catchment, transect and land use type. Between 1984 and 1996, forest...
Gullies (locally termed dongas) are a characteristic feature of the landscape in central KwaZulu-Natal and are highly associated with widespread, stratified colluvial sediments and the buried palaeosols that have formed in this material. Research objectives were to find out which sediment property or properties contribute most to the vulnerability of the colluvium to gully erosion; to study the erosion...
The paper describes the application of caesium-137 measurements for estimating soil erosion rates in a small catchment in the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze River, China. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam has drawn attention to the impact of erosion and sedimentation, but there are relatively few quantitative estimates of sediment transfer for this area. The suitability of the fallout radionuclide,...
Soils with the morphological features of podzols are widespread in coastal East Antarctica. Neither the World Reference Base of Soil Resources (WRB) nor Soil Taxonomy (ST) adequately classify these soils, so we recommend the addition of Spodic Cryosol at the second hierarchical level in WRB and Spodorthel at the great group level of ST. We divide the Spodic Cryosols into ornithogenic and non-ornithogenic...
The evidence presented by numerous investigations of the interface between lichens and their rock substrates strongly suggests that the weathering of minerals can be accelerated by the growth of at least some lichen species. The effects of lichens on their mineral substrates can be attributed to both physical and chemical processes. The physical effects are reflected by the mechanical disruption of...
The ice-free antarctic vegetation oases are characterized by specific soil patterns. Four organic soils from mosses in Wilkes Land close to the Australian Casey Station (latitude: 66 o 18'S, longitude: 110 o 32'E) are discussed with respect to soil formation, ecology, and distribution. A soil survey of the ice-free coastal landscape suggests that mosses are the main source of organic...
A silt mantle enriched in Ca is important in buffering soils on quartzitic terrane in the southeastern Uinta Mountains. We examined 32 pedons along an elevational gradient on the south slope of the eastern Uintas to determine the amount of the silt and its importance to pedogenesis. The pedons were in the upper montane forest (2700–3000 m), subalpine forest (3000–3400 m) and alpine tundra (3400–3850...
During the Quaternary, Sierra Nevada (southern Spain) was affected by several glacial–periglacial episodes, decreasing progressively in intensity with time. These cold episodes alternated with the ones characterized by landscape stability and soil formation. Twelve soils that were formed on pre-glacial surfaces and glacial deposits of various ages were studied in four sectors: Laguna Seca, Lanjarón...
In this study, we examined the factors that control the spatial distribution of bank gully heads along a reach of an ephemeral river (Rambla Salada) in an area threatened by desertification in Southeast Spain. The activity of 458 gully heads was assessed in the field by pre-defined criteria such as sharp edges, presence of a plunge pool, tension cracks, recent deposited sediments, flow marks, and...
The purpose of this study was to analyse if the colour of soils on granito-gneissic bedrock of West Africa could give some simple indicators of the duration of soil waterlogging. A toposequence on a representative hillside in central Togo (lat 8°38′–8°39′N, long 1°00′–1°01′E) was studied by means of 19 hydropedological stations. Soil and piezometric conditions were studied on these stations for three...
Particle size data from the western part of the Chinese Loess Plateau do not support the last interglacial correlation, suggested by the data from the central part of the Loess Plateau, between the high dust-influx events in the Loess Plateau and the cool events in the high northern latitudes. The lack of marked oscillations in the particle size of the last interglacial paleosol S1 in the western...
The morphological and chemical features of upland soils derived from ophiolitic parent materials in Palawan, Philippines, are summarised from soil survey data, and compared with those on geosynclinal sedimentary rocks. Although the ophiolitic crystalline rocks are lithologically heterogeneous, the soils have similar morphologies, with reddish colours, clay textures, and friable crumb structures. However,...
Suspended sediment load was analyzed in a small, high-gradient stream of the Eastern Italian Alps which was instrumented to measure discharge and sediment transport. The ratio of suspended to total sediment yield and the relations between sediment concentration and water discharge were analyzed for seven floods which occurred from 1991 to 1996 in summer and autumn (from June to October). Different...
The soil conditions of an abandoned shunting yard in the Ruhr area were studied to find the most important factors influencing plant growth and nutrient cycling. The chemical and physical conditions of five Urbic Anthrosols with different development histories were compared with those of a nearby Calcic Cambisol under agricultural use. In the second half of the 19th century, the ground level of the...
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