GeoLog

Soil Sciences

Don’t leaf it to the trees: Amazonian soils also work to store carbon.

August 26, 2020
Don’t leaf it to the trees: Amazonian soils also work to store carbon.
'Yasuní National Park' by Jose Schreckinger (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

The Amazon rainforest covers an area of 5.5 million km² and is well known for being an invaluable global resource for carbon storage. But it’s not just the trees and vegetation of the Amazonian rainforest that lock in and store carbon – the very soil in these forests can do the same thing, according to research published in EGU’s journal SOIL earlier this year. In this study Carlos Alberto Quesada ...[Read More]

Geotalk: Olga Vindušková, the Soil System Sciences Division’s co-blog and social media co-ordinator!

August 21, 2020
Geotalk: Olga Vindušková, the Soil System Sciences Division’s co-blog and social media co-ordinator!
Credit: Jaroslav Kukla

Hello Olga, thanks for speaking with us today, can you tell us a little about your background and how you got to where you are now? Thank you for inviting me for what might be my first interview! My background is in environmental science and I chose to study soils because of how useful they are (in supporting ecosystems and our well-being) and how interdisciplinary their study is, spanning biology ...[Read More]

Imaggeo On Monday: Burnt roots

August 17, 2020
Imaggeo On Monday: Burnt roots
Burnt roots. Credit: Anna Kühnel (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Fires are a common and often natural worldwide phenomena, that are often integral to the lifecycle of certain land-based ecosystems. Despite this, frequent or unusually intense fires can have significant effects on plant productivity, plant community composition and root properties. Although many trees have evolved to grow in fire prone areas, they usually have certain adaptations to help them sur ...[Read More]

Imaggeo On Monday: Carbon-sink

August 3, 2020
Imaggeo On Monday: Carbon-sink
Carbon sink. Credit: Gabriel Sigmund (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Biochar is a carbon rich product of biomass pyrolysis, a process where biological material is exposed to high temperatures, in the absence of oxygen, to cause the decomposition of that material into various chemical and physical components. By going through this process, biochar can be a valuable soil additive and a carbon sink with a high potential to take up a wide variety of contaminants (throu ...[Read More]