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]
Soils going red: Terra rossa
The term “terra rossa” comes from the Italian for “red soil” or “red earth”. Although terra rossa exists in other places in the world, these soils are common in areas with Mediterranean-type climates: alternation of a rainy and cool-to warm-dry season. The terra rossa soil is heavy and clay-rich (silty-clay to clayey) soil, strongly reddish, developed on limesto ...[Read More]
Monday paper: Modelling soil organic carbon stocks in global change scenarios: a CarboSOIL application
Muñoz-Rojas, M., Jordán, A., Zavala, L. M., González-Peñaloza, F. A., De la Rosa, D., Pino-Mejias, R., and Anaya-Romero, M. 2013. Modelling soil organic carbon stocks in global change scenarios: a CarboSOIL application. Biogeosciences, 10, 8253-8268, DOI: 10.5194/bg-10-8253-2013. Abstract Global climate change, as a consequence of the increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 concentration, may ...[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]