Soil improvers

has long been used as a management tool all over the world. In our study we designed 2 experiments to investigate the affect fire has on both organic soil layers and Pinus palustris (Longleaf pine) saplings. For this study, a sapling is a youth Longleaf pine less than 2m in height in addiction to one you can wrap your fingers around. The organic soil layer is made of undecomposed plant matter (litter). Samples were taken from 2 different forests located behind the UNCW campus. A prescribed burn

organic and conventional. Different farming methods have their own way on affecting the public health and the environment through herbicides and pesticides. Some of the benefits of organic technologies are higher soil organic matter and nitrogen, lower fossil energy inputs, and conservation of soil moisture and water resources (Pimentel and Hepperly 2008). Conventional farming can be more ecological by adapting some of the organic technologies. The objective of this literature review is to better understand

Appalachian region of the eastern United States, represents a dramatic landscape-scale disturbance. The process includes removing as much as 300m of rock, soil, and vegetation from ridge tops to access deep coal seams; the overburden material is then placed in adjacent valleys, burying headwater streams. Post-mining topography, vegetation, soils, and runoff pathways can be severely altered during the mining and reclamation process, greatly altering the landscape’s hydrology and the biochemistry of

Factors Affecting Soil Development Studies on the research of soil have shown that the profile of soils is influenced by five factors interacting with each there. These are: parent material, climate, topography, organisms, and time. Parent material: This refers to the mineral material, or organic material from which the soil is formed. Soils will carry the characteristics of its parent material such as color, texture, structure, mineral composition and so on. For example, if soils are formed from

INTRODUCTION : Construction of roads in black cotton soil areas has been problematic due to their low bearing capacity and the detrimental effects of volume instability arising from swelling and shrinkage characteristics of such soils during wet and dry seasons. Such problems assume greater acuteness where the water table is high and clayey subsoil stratum is thick. A Perfect example of a case history study can be considered from “Gudivada-Bantumilli” State Highway, which passes through a plain

California drought: is there light at the end of the tunnel? “If you do not take care of nature, nature will not take care of you”. Those were the words of the late Nobel award winner Professor Wangari Mathaai. Being a great lover of the environment, she foresaw the numerous effects that lack of environmental conservation would result it and true to that the world is receiving a big blow from Mother Nature. Global warming, droughts and famine, irregular climatic changes are among the effects that

Soil respiration is the greatest terrestrial contributor of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and can be a direct indication of agricultural crop and soil health (Schlesinger and Andrews, 2000). The amount of carbon dioxide generated from soil respiration is influenced by several factors including, temperature, moisture, and carbon/nitrogen ratios in plant litter amongst others (Biology 208 Lab Manual 2016). The occurrence of soil respiration is as a result of root respiration which signifying healthy

Rationale and Background. To date, the majority of microbiological study of soils have centered on bacterial and fungal presence in the context of plant mutualism [Figure 2]. Additionally, analyses of microbial biomass have typically utilized indirect models, such as change in soil carbon levels, as a measurement of microbial growth dynamics (Holden and Treseder 2014). When emphasizing ecological roles of microbes as nutrient cyclers, this is a useful methodology. However, it has led to a void

when water drains through soil from sources at the surface, adsorbed pesticide molecules can become unattached, or desorbed, and wash away to a new location (Rao, 1999). Just as degradation has a measure in the half-life of a compound, sorption also has a measure in the partition coefficient (Koc), which is a ratio of pesticide concentration in a soil bound state versus dissolved in soil-water (Rao, 1999). In fact, “the solubility of a pesticide and its sorption on soil are inversely related; [in

Secondary & Micronutrients Secondary nutrients are also required for plant growth and consist of Sulfur, Calcium, and Magnesium. Though they are secondary they are still quite abundant in the soil and are utilized within the complex functions a plant needs to grow. Sulfur is important for its presence in vitamins and enzymes, calcium is essential to the structure of the cell wall, and magnesium is the main electron carrier in the photosynthetic reaction (Prasad & Power, 1997, p. 243). Micronutrients