SSS
Soil System Sciences

Soil pictures

Soils at Imaggeo: flying over the Saharan Cauldron

Carolina Cavazos-Guerra, Germany The Saharan desert has one of the most extreme climates on Earth. The dust loading and thermodynamics over this region are unique, and have major impacts on the climate of North Africa, Europe and the Atlantic. Fennec is a large-scale programme designed to tackle one of the world’s key climate regions by delivering the most comprehensive field campaign ever mounted ...[Read More]

Soils at Imaggeo: soil erosion in olive groves

Artemi Cerdà, Spain Olive-cropped soils in Spain cover more than 2.4 million ha, 75% in southern Spain. Historically, high soil erosion rates have been determined in olive groves due to soil management, mostly. Due to Mediterranean climate conditions and low water inputs, traditional management is based on reduced tree density, canopy size control by pruning, and intensive weed control. Weed contr ...[Read More]

Soils at Imaggeo: Patterned sand

Alma de Groot, The Netherlands Dunes are wind-generated accumulations of sand particles present in desert or coastal land. Sand dunes have smooth and uniform forms, although geometry may be highly variable. The size of particles of sand dunes is highly concentrated around 0.2 mm in diameter due to wind transportation. The pattern showed in the picture is the result of the formation of aeolian dune ...[Read More]

Soils at Imaggeo: Welcome to Stony Soil Country

Artemi Cerdà University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain Antonio Jordán University of Seville, Sevilla, Spain In the Mediterranean, soil erosion causes rock fragments to surface easily, so that stony soils are very common. The stones on the ground are collected and used for the construction fences (dry stone walls) and separating properties by farmers. In most cases, fences are built without any morta ...[Read More]