Many scientists are currently debating whether soil science is an academic field in which scientists are engaged in talking to each other, ignoring the rest of society. Of course, traditionally, the dissemination of soil science has been a difficult field. Among other problems, some scientists have reviewed the use of complicated jargon. Soil Science academics work in increasingly smaller and smal ...[Read More]
Monday paper: Interplay of riparian forest and groundwater in the hillslope hydrology of Sudanian West Africa (northern Benin)
Richard, A., Galle, S., Descloitres, M., Cohard, J.-M., Vandervaere, J.-P., Séguis, L., and Peugeot, C. 2013. Interplay of riparian forest and groundwater in the hillslope hydrology of Sudanian West Africa (northern Benin), Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 17, 5079-5096. DOI: 10.5194/hess-17-5079-2013. Abstract Forests are thought to play an important role in the regional dynamics of the West A ...[Read More]
Soil color never lies
Often, soil color is described using general terms such as “brown”, “red”, “dark”, etc. When I talk about this issue for the first time with my students of Soil Science, I use to ask them how to describe the color of a soil sample. Normally, in a few seconds, I get a list of color names ranging from dark brown to bright red, including “chocolate”, “coffee” and “ ...[Read More]
The Fire Research Institute, more than three decades of Fire Science
Jason Greenlee jasongreenlee@hotmail.com The Fire Research Institute (FRI) was founded in 1983 as a non-profit organization with the lofty goal of promoting world peace through fire science. The concept was stolen from Richard Nixon, who, you will remember, opened up relations between the US and China by sending a ping-pong team to visit China. I thought that more scientific interaction between na ...[Read More]