Search results for "Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences"
showing 10 items of 2301 documents
Changes in soil organic matter and soil humic substances following the afforestation of former agricultural lands in the boreal-nemoral ecotone (Latv…
2019
Abstract Abandonment of agricultural land is a widespread process in Northern Europe, which is associated with changes in content and distribution of organic matter in soil, including C stocks. There is insufficient information on changes in soil organic matter properties during afforestation of these lands. The aim of the study was to determine and describe the influence of afforestation on organic carbon (CORG) content and properties of soil organic matter (SOM) in mineral topsoil in the boreo-nemoral ecotone in Latvia. We studied soils in 4 model territories that represented abandoned farmlands and territories where mixed or coniferous forests were established at different times on forme…
Soil moisture influences sorptivity and water repellency of topsoil aggregates in native grasslands
2017
Abstract Water repellency is associated to coating of soil particles by hydrophobic substances, usually of organic origin, affecting water dynamics in soil matrix. We analyzed the effect of water repellency on water sorptivity of topsoil aggregates of six soil types under three initial moisture conditions (10 kPa, 100 kPa, and air-dried). Undisturbed soil samples were collected to evaluate sorptivity in the 0–5 cm soil layer at different locations in Pampa Biome in southern Brazil. Disturbed soil samples were also collected for soil particle size distribution, particle density and organic matter content. Sorptivity test was conducted in a tension micro-infiltrometer, using distilled water a…
Connectivity assessment in Mediterranean vineyards using improved stock unearthing method, LiDAR and soil erosion field surveys
2018
The interaction between processes and landforms is accelerated in vineyards due to bare tilled soils that enhance splash, runoff, and erosion. Traditionally, in order to assess these processes, the stock unearthing method (SUM) is considered a useful methodology that uses the graft union of the vine plant as passive bio-indicator of the topsoil level changes. However, SUM assumes that the topography between the rows is planar when development of a model of the current micro-topography is performed. Thus, we consider that there is a need to develop a new methodology (ISUM: improved SUM) that, by adding new measurements in the inter-row areas (at least 3), allows inclusion of the absent micro…
Prediction of organic carbon and total nitrogen contents in organic wastes and their composts by Infrared spectroscopy and partial least square regre…
2017
Middle and near infrared (MIR and NIR) were employed to determine organic carbon (OC) and total nitrogen (TN) in different soil organic amendments including wastes, composts and mixtures of composts and organic wastes. Prediction models based on partial least squares (PLS) regression from the spectra of untreated samples were built. Different spectra preprocessing strategies were adopted and the best number of latent variable was evaluated using leave-one-out cross-validation. Attenuated total reflectance (PLS-ATR-MIR) and diffuse reflectance (PLS-DR-NIR) models were built and evaluated from root mean square error of cross validation and prediction (RMSECV and RMSEP), coefficients of determ…
Impact of wheeled and tracked tractors on soil physical properties in a mixed conifer stand
2016
Abstract: Damage to forest soil caused by vehicle traffic mainly consists of soil compaction, displacement, and rut formation. Severity of the damage depends on vehicle mass, weight of the carried loads, ground morphology, and soil properties, such as moisture. This paper investigates the impacts of two types of vehicles (tracked or wheeled tractor), traffic intensities (one or five skidding cycles) and soil moisture (24% or 13% by weight) on compaction of a loam textured soil in a mixed conifer stand of central Italy. Changes in porosity, bulk density, shear and penetration resistances were analyzed. The latter three parameters were significantly higher in the trafficked soil portions than…
An open-source instrumentation package for intensive soil hydraulic characterization
2020
International audience; We present a new open-source and modular instrumentation package composed of up to ten automatic in- filtrometers connected to data acquisition systems for automatic recording of multiple infiltration experiments. The infiltrometers are equipped with differential transducers to monitor water level changes in a Mariotte re- servoir, and, in turn, to quantify water infiltration rates. The data acquisition systems consist of low-cost components and operate on the open-source microcontroller platform Arduino. The devices were tested both in the laboratory and on different urban and agricultural soils in France and India. More specifically, we tested three procedures to t…
Diffusion of oxygen in cork.
2012
International audience; This work reports measurements of effective oxygen diffusion coefficient in raw cork. Kinetics of oxygen transfer through cork is studied at 298 K thanks to a homemade manometric device composed of two gas compartments separated by a cork wafer sample. The first compartment contains oxygen, whereas the second one is kept under dynamic vacuum. The pressure decrease in the first compartment is recorded as a function of time. The effective diffusion coefficient D-eff is obtained by applying Fick's law to transient state using a numerical method based on finite differences. An analytical model derived from Fick's law applied to steady state is also proposed. Results give…
Translational diffusion coefficients of volatile compounds in various aqueous solutions at low and subzero temperatures.
2005
International audience; Translational diffusion coefficients (D(12)) of volatile compounds were measured in model media with the profile concentration method. The influence of sample temperature (from 25 to -10 degrees C) was studied on translational diffusion in sucrose or maltodextrin solutions at various concentrations. Results show that diffusivity of volatile compounds in sucrose solutions is controlled by temperature, molecule size, and the viscosity of the liquid phase as expected with the Stokes-Einstein equation; moreover, physicochemical interactions between volatile compounds and the medium are determinant for diffusion estimation. At negative temperature, the winding path induce…
What is a tree in the Mediterranean Basin hotspot? A critical analysis
2019
Background: Tree species represent 20% of the vascular plant species worldwide and they play a crucial role in the global functioning of the biosphere. The Mediterranean Basin is one of the 36 world biodiversity hotspots, and it is estimated that forests covered 82% of the landscape before the first human impacts, thousands of years ago. However, the spatial distribution of the Mediterranean biodiversity is still imperfectly known, and a focus on tree species constitutes a key issue for understanding forest functioning and develop conservation strategies. Methods: We provide the first comprehensive checklist of all native tree taxa (species and subspecies) present in the Mediterranean-Europ…
Multi-mycotoxin determination in barley and derived products from Tunisia and estimation of their dietary intake.
2017
A study on raw barley and derived products (barley soup and beers) was carried out to determine the natural presence of twenty-four mycotoxins by both liquid chromatography and gas chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). The developed multi-mycotoxin procedure was based on both SLE and QuEChERS extraction steps. 66% of analyzed samples presented mycotoxin contamination and only one sample, which was soup of barley (6 ng/g), exceeded the maximum level (ML) established by EU for OTA (5 ng/g). Raw barley was the most contaminated matrix (62%), which concentrations ranged from 1.70 to 287.13 ng/g) and type of detected mycotoxins (DON, 15AcDON, NEO, NIV, HT2, FB1, OTA, ENA, E…