Search results for "Soil C"
showing 10 items of 515 documents
Soil carbon in Mediterranean ecosystems and related management problems
2011
The ecology of the cork-oark (Quercus suber L.) stands in NW Sicily
2017
The uneven presence of the cork oak (Quercus suber L.) within its distribution range seems to be affected not only by its climatic requirements but also by rather specific edaphic needs. In fact, most of the known populations throughout the Mediterranean area thrive on acidic soils deriving from metamorphic or volcanic rock outcrops. However, some Italian populations of this species behave as if they were independent on the chemical and physical characteristics of the substrate, e.g. growing on calcareous soils, which are considered less suitable. This is the case of some populations in central Italy (Latium) and NW Sicily (Trapani Mts. and Palermo Mts.). A multidisciplinary investigation c…
Sistemi per la valutazione del compattamento dei terreni agrari
2005
The traffic of agricultural machines can cause soil compaction, reducing, above all, its porosity. The measurement of soil cone penetrometer resistance is the easiest and quickest method for monitoring and assessing soil compaction. The aim of this research is to test two mechanised systems for the geo-referenced measurement and, therefore, producing maps of soil cone penetrometer resistance. The first system was developed mounting an electronic penetrometer and a DGPS mobile receiver on a tracked minitransporter. The second system was built mounting, on a frame fixed to the front part of a tractor: four load cells; a system for signal conditioning and data acquisition; four rods and penetr…
Soil erosion and carbon budget in Mediterranean vineyards
2016
Vineyards of Mediterranean regions are characterized by low organic matter level and high sediment and nutrient erosion rates, which are the main causes of soil degradation and low sustainability of vine production. Alternative soil management - cover crops, green manure of prune residues, buffer strip- has widely applied as soil management practices to reduce soil degradation processes. However, the effectiveness of innovative soil management should be evaluated in relation to climatic and soil conditions. Many studies have been carried out in Sicilian vineyards in order to improve the sustainability with particular attention to: reduction of erosion, increase of soil organic matter, manag…
Effective Practices in Mitigating Soil Erosion from Fields
2017
Soil erosion by water is a natural process that cannot be avoided. Soil erosion depends on many factors, and a distinction should be made between humanly unchangeable (e.g., rainfall) and modifiable (e.g., length of the field) soil erosion factors. Soil erosion has both on-site and off-site effects. Soil conservation tries to combine modifiable factors so as to maintain erosion in an area of interest to an acceptable level. Strategies to control soil erosion have to be adapted to the desired land use. Knowledge of soil loss tolerance, T, i.e., the maximum admissible erosion from a given field, allows technicians or farmers to establish whether soil conservation practices need to be applied …
No-Till Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration Patterns as Affected by Climate and Soil Erosion in the Arable Land of Mediterranean Europe
2022
No-tillage (NT) has been considered an agronomic tool to sequester soil organic carbon (SOC) and match the 4p1000 initiative requirements of conservative soil management. Recently, some doubts have emerged about the NT effect on SOC sequestration, often because observations and experimental data vary widely depending on climate and geographic characteristics. Therefore, a suitable SOC accounting method is needed that considers climate and morphology interactions. In this study, the yearly ratio between SOC in NT and conventional tillage (CT) (RRNT/CT) collected in a previous study for flat (96 samples) and sloping (44 samples) paired sites was used to map the overestimation of SOC sequestra…
Applying the RUSLE and ISUM in the Tierra de Barros Vineyards (Extremadura, Spain) to Estimate Soil Mobilisation Rates
2020
Spain is one of the largest wine producers in the world, with Extremadura (south-west Spain) being its second-largest producing region after Castilla La Mancha. Within Extremadura, the most traditional and productive viticulture region is the Tierra de Barros, which boasts an annual production of 3×
Nomenclature for Hydrogeological Instability Risks
2022
The nomenclature for hydrogeological instability risks includes four main risks, which are distinguished according to the risk causes : 1) hydrogeological risk, that is slowly caused by natural factors (e.g. collapse landslides in a calcareous cliff in uninhabited areas and erosion along a marly-calcareous slope) in environments where human activities are minimal, i.e. woods, forests and mountain pastures; 2) hydraulic-pedological farming risk, that implies the occurrence of landslides in every winter and is caused by incorrect crop selection, not suitable for the soil and climate parameters (e.g. on a hilly slope with a clay vertisol type with a landslide having different fronts, when the …
Afforestation and reforestation: the Sicilian case study
2014
In some regions of the world such as the Northern Hemisphere, the abandonment of agricultural land is one of the most widespread forms of land use change. In general, abandonment is followed by colonization by herbaceous and woody plants. Since the 1950s, wide areas of Southern Italy have been afforested for soil conservation improvement. In order to quantify the effects of agricultural abandonment and artificial afforestation on soil organic carbon (SOC), a dataset of 48 Sicilian sites has been analyzed. Because of their high environmental variability, these sites can be considered as representative of Southern Italy and in general of the Mediterranean basin. Soil samples were taken throug…
Comparing soil inventory with modelling : Carbon balance in central European forest soils varies among forest types
2018
Forest soils represent a large carbon pool and already small changes in this pool may have an important effect on the global carbon cycle. To predict the future development of the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool, well-validated models are needed. We applied the litter and soil carbon model Yasso15 to 1838 plots of the German national forest soil inventory (NFSI) for the period between 1985 and 2014 to enables a direct comparison to the NFSI measurements. In addition, to provide data for the German Greenhouse Gas Inventory, we simulated the development of SOC with Yasso15 applying a climate projection based on the RCP8.5 scenario. The initial model-calculated SOC stocks were adjusted to the m…