Marc Oliva University of Lisbon, Portugal The World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and the IPCC Working Group 1 (Fourth Assessment Report) recognize the Cryosphere as one of the most significant challenges of climate science and as a major source of uncertainty in global climate projections. While the permafrost carbon feedback has been identified as …[Read More]
Soil System Sciences
Soil colors – what more could you want?
Nuno Simões University of Algarve, Portugal E-mail: nuno_simoes58@hotmail.com We can easily see that soil color varies from one site to another, with depth, with topographic position and composition. Even color may be light brown in one side of the road and dark brown in the other. Whether for scientific purposes, or just curious, you study the colorimetric …[Read More]
Will drinking tea get us thinking about soils? Yes, but only if you help us spread the word!
Taru Lehtinen PhD candidate at the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland tmk2@hi.is The Tea Bag Index Project wants to create a global map on decomposition with the help of citizen scientists. We use teabags to collect vital information on the global carbon cycle. With our protocol (see our web page and …[Read More]
Soils at Imaggeo: gully erosion in Swaziland
John Quinton, UK This post was also published simultaneously in G-Soil.
Monday paper: Soil carbon stocks and their variability across the forests, shrublands and grasslands of peninsular Spain
Doblas-Miranda, E., Rovira, P., Brotons, L., Martínez-Vilalta, J., Retana, J., Pla, M., and Vayreda, J. 2013. Soil carbon stocks and their variability across the forests, shrublands and grasslands of peninsular Spain. Biogeosciences, 10, 8353-8361. DOI: 10.5194/bg-10-8353-2013. Abstract Accurate estimates of C stocks and fluxes of soil organic carbon (SOC) are needed to assess the impact of …[Read More]
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 …[Read More]
Boring Soil Science strikes back
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 …[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 …[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 …[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 …[Read More]