Recent  

Drought and flooding challenge agricultural systems and their management globally. Here we investigated the response of soils from long term agricultural field sites with simple and diverse crop rotations to either drought or flooding. We found that irrespective of crop rotation complexity, soil and microbial properties were more resistant to flooding than to drought and highly resilient to drought and flooding, during single or repeated stress pulses.

Legacy soil data provides a valuable data basis to generate high-resolution soil maps by digital soil mapping (DSM). DSM allows to regionalize soil properties by relating them to environmental covariates with the help of an empirical model. We studied the usefulness of data clustering methods to tackle potential sampling bias in the used legacy soil data while applying DSM for soil texture regionalization. Clustering has proved to be useful in various steps of the DSM procedure.

Straw mulching is not always combined with no-till during conservation tillage. Here we explored the effects of long-term straw mulching on soil attributes with soil depths under a no-till system. Compared to straw removal, straw mulching did various effects on soil properties at different depths, and the biggest difference occurred at the topsoil depth. Overall, straw mulch is highly recommended for use under the no-till system because of its benefits to soil fertility and bacterial abundance.

This study found that the influence of argan trees on soil quality in South Morocco is mostly limited to the area covered by the tree crown. However, the tree influences the bare soil outside the crown positively in specific directions because wind and water can move litter and soil particles from under the tree to the areas between the trees. These findings based on soil samples around argan trees could help structure reforestation measures.

In this manuscript, we describe changes in desert soil bacterial diversity and function when two ecosystem engineers, shrubs and ant nests, in an arid environment are present. The results show that bacterial activity increases when there are ecosystem engineers and that their impact is non-additive. This is one of a handful of studies that investigated the separate and combined effects of ecosystem engineers on soil bacterial communities investigating both composition and function.

As urban populations grow, soil sealing with impermeable surfaces will increase. At present there is limited knowledge on the effect of sealing on soil carbon and nutrients. We found that in general, sealing reduced soil carbon and nutrients, however, where there were additions of material due to human activity, soil carbon and nutrients were increased. This suggests there is a legacy soil carbon store in areas with an industrial past and highlights the influence of artefacts in urban soil.

Loss of agricultural land calls for preserving our most fertile soils. Abrupt reductions in soil pH and increases in NO₃− within continuous corn at the highest N rate, imply strong acidification and nitrification. Greater yields and return of corn residues in fertilized systems improved WAS and BD and decreased P and K, whereas SOM remains unchanged. Rotating with soybeans improved yields across N levels yet hindered the gains in WAS. Further research should focus on microbial nutrient cycling.

Storing C in subsurface soils can help mitigate climate change, but this requires a better understanding of subsurface C dynamics. We investigated changes in subsurface C storage after 25 years under a combination of compost, cover crops (WCC), and mineral fertilizer, and found a potential WCC – compost interaction. Pores from WCC roots facilitate subsurface C and nutrient transport, increasing C stocks and demonstrating the potential for subsurface carbon storage in tilled agricultural systems.

Transfer of organic carbon from topsoil to deeper horizons and to water table is little documented, especially in equatorial environments despite high primary productivity of the evergreen forest. Using column experiments with podzol soil and percolating solution sampled in an Amazonian podzol area, we showed how C-rich Bh horizon plays a major role on natural organic matter transfer and Si, Fe, Al mobility after a kaolinitic layer transition, thus giving insight in genesis of tropical podzol.