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To feed its 1.3 billion population with a per capita cultivated land far below the world average, China is already facing a great challenge of land scarcity. Accelerated urbanization along with explosive economic growth has further worsened the shortage of agricultural land over the last two decades. Increasing concern over land is expressed in terms of soil availability for grain production and soil...
Soils in urban areas are often artificially formed and preserved as cultural layers in which soil materials are mixed with artifacts. The vertical change of soil properties denotes the historical change of human activities, and therefore, urban soil can be considered as a record of history of urban development. We studied a deep profile of urban soil (600 cm) in Nanjing, China, by intensively sampling...
This study used GIS technology, remote sensing images of 1949, 1966, 1981, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000, to analyze the spatial process of urbanization and its impact on the soil resources in Yixing city, southeast China. The results showed that the urban area grew more than three-fold during 51 years and the loss of paddy soil accounted for 82.9% of all soil loss. According to the expansion dynamics...
Urban forest mainly refers to urban green space and suburban forest. Urban forest is quite significant in reducing negative effects of civilization and preserving the ecological balance of city ecological system. This paper applied remote sensing method in the study of urban forest in Jinan City. Results show that there are various kinds of greenbelts in Jinan City, including public greenbelt, residential...
Detailed surveys of surface water in two contrasting peri-urban areas in the Yangtze River Delta region of China were conducted to determine the distribution of heavy metals, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) as well as the speciation of N and P. A factory-based (FB) area was compared with a vegetable-based (VB) area during the dry season. The concentrations of heavy metals in the surface water in the...
Conventional classification systems based on vegetation and land use are frequently used to characterize or describe urban soils to determine the influence of urbanization on soils. In this study, the sensitivity of different grouping methods in reflecting soil variations along an urban–rural gradient was compared. The objective of this study was to determine the most sensitive grouping system in...
Shenzhen is one of the special economic zones in China. It has been growing rapidly from rural land to an industrial city since the mid-1980s. With the process of urbanization, flooding has become a threat to the security of the city area. In this study, Buji River basin in Shenzhen Region was selected to investigate the effect of urbanization on surface runoff and peak discharge. Land use data were...
With increasing urbanization, the demands for high quality agricultural products induced changes in local cropping patterns. Although grain production still occupied a large portion in sown and planted areas, the share of sown areas declined from 67% to 44% for total grain crops, and 54% to 35% for rice between 1989 and 2002 in Fujian province. The change in crop spectrum and land use by urbanization...
The Yangtse delta area is one of the most rapidly developing areas in China. There are mega-cities like Shanghai and Nanjing and the surrounding urban areas of different sizes including those along the lower reach of the Yangtse river from Shanghai to Nanjing. In combination with their satellite counties and towns, they form one of the most densely distributed urban areas in China. This is a case...
Characterisation of aeolian material in the Girilambone Region of New South Wales (600 km NW of Sydney), using particle size analysis, mineralogy, geochemistry and micromorphological analysis, shows that it consists of spheroidal, highly abraded 70 μm quartz grains. Although relatively pure aeolian accessions are found on top of Tertiary leucitite flows, the aeolian material is generally admixed with...
At about 1000 m above sea level in the Vallombrosa Forest, northern Apennines, Central Italy, a dense pan that meets the diagnostic criteria for fragipans is discontinuously distributed. The unusual slope-parallel “digitate” distribution of the pan suggests that it could have formed on water-saturated soil material that moved as earthflows. Actually, several soils in the Vallombrosa Forest have buried...
In the present paper, the preliminary results of a study concerning the fan dynamics in the valley of the Mucone River (Sila Massif, southern Italy) are presented. In the study area highly weathered Palaeozoic crystalline rocks crop out, ranging from residual soils to moderately weathered rocks. Because of the rugged topography and the abundance of weathered deposits, mass movements affect the great...
The Sny Magill Unit of Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa, contains the largest cluster of prehistoric effigy mounds on public land in North America. The mounds are situated atop a low terrace of the Upper Mississippi River, where they are slowly being buried by overbank deposition during floods. The terrace surface includes forest soils with argillic (Bt) or cambic (Bw) horizons developed in up...
Colluvial deposits consisting of silts and loams were detected in several climatologically different areas of NE Tibet (3200–3700 m a.s.l.). Layering, distinct organic content and low content of coarse matter as well as location in the relief revealed an origin from low-energy slope erosion (hillwash). Underlying and intercalated paleosols were classified as Chernozems, Phaeozems, Regosols and Fluvisols...
Twenty-one soil profiles were described, analysed and classified in a salt marsh dune system in SE Spain. Sites for sampling were selected according to micro-topographical positions and vegetation types. The pedons showed an A–C type profile. Most of the profiles at summit positions had a microbiotical crust in the upper centimetres, formed by fungal mycelia that contribute to agglutination of sand...
This paper reports the influence that vegetation recovery has exerted on the soil behaviour to erosion by water during both the first and eight years after experimental fires. The work was carried out at La Concordia Experimental Station (Valencia, Spain), which includes nine plots (4 m wide×20 m long) installed on a calcareous hillside representative of Mediterranean shrubland areas. In June 1995...
To assess the effect of trees and shrubs on stream structure on different spatial scales, we tested the relationships between their percentage coverage in relation to width, depth and stream slope. This research was conducted during the winter and spring of 2004 at Nahal Oren, Israel, an ephemeral mountainous stream.Our hypothesis, that in the presence of high vegetation cover a deep and narrow stream...
Knowledge about soil formation in tropical montane rainforests is scarce and patchy. We examined the altitudinal change of soils in a Bolivian tropical montane rainforest, aiming to illuminate the contribution of podzolization and hydromorphic processes to soil formation. In three transects from 1700 m to 3400 m a.s.l. we determined the pH, exchangeable cation exchange capacity, carbon and nitrogen...
As geospatial technologies increasingly figure into resource management activities, there is a corresponding need to provide commensurately detailed high resolution spatial data. This study addresses the capacity of rapidly and cheaply acquired mineral-magnetic data to provide detailed spatially distributed assessments of long-term cumulative soil loss from agricultural fields. Model output from a...
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