Recent  

In this citizen-science project, we combined a standardised litter bag method (Tea Bag Index) with microbiome analysis of bacteria and fungi colonising the teabags to gain a holistic understanding of the carbon degradation dynamics in temperate European soils. Our method focuses only on the active part of the soil microbiome. The results show that about one-third of the prokaryotes and one-fifth of the fungal species (ASVs) in the soil was enriched in response to the presence of fresh OM.

Although present in food security key areas, Arenosols carbon stocks are barely studied. A 150 years old land-use change in a mediterranean Arenosol showed a loss from 50 GtC ha⁻¹ to 3 GtC ha⁻¹ after grape cultivation. ¹⁴C showed that deep ploughing in vineyard plot redistributed the remaining microbial carbon both vertically and horizontally. Despite the drastic degradation of the organic matter pool, Arenosols would have a high carbon storage potential targeting the 4 per 1000 Initiative.

Our study focuses on (E)-pyriminobac-methyl (EPM), a weedicide commonly applied to agricultural soils in China, but that can potentially pose serious risks to groundwater quality once it percolates through soil. We tested the adsorption–desorption, degradation, and leaching of this compound in five agricultural soils sampled from different provinces in China.

Soil organic carbon sequestration is considered an attractive technology to partially mitigate climate change. Here, we show how the SOC storage potential varies globally. The estimated additional SOC storage potential in the topsoil of global croplands (29–67 Pg C) equates to only 2 to 5 years of emissions offsetting and 32 % of agriculture's 92 Pg historical carbon debt. Since SOC is temperature-dependent, this potential is likely to reduce by 18 % by 2040 due to climate change.

We investigated the effects of different tillage intensities and soil coverings on soil physical parameters. Our results showed that because of high soil structure heterogeneity, large-scale methods (e.g., as double ring infiltrometer) may be better tools to evaluate the benefits of both reduced tillage and cover crops. By comparison, controversial results were obtained with small-scale methods (e.g., on bulk density and penetration resistance).

Unravelling the relationships between plant rhizosheath, root exudation and soil C dynamic may bring interesting perspectives in breeding for sustainable agriculture. Using 4 pearl millet lines with contrasting rhizosheath, we found that the δ¹³C and F¹⁴C of root-adhering soil differed from those of bulk and control soil, indicating C exudation in the rhizosphere. This C exudation varied according to the genotype and a conceptual modelling performed with data showed a genotypic effect on the RPE.

Forest conversion altered both bacterial and fungal soil networks, reduced bacterial network complexity and enhanced fungal network complexity. The reason is that forest conversion changed soil pH and other soil properties, which altered bacterial composition and subsequent network structure. Our study demonstrates the impact of forest conversion for soil network structure, which has important implications for ecosystem functions and health of soil ecosystems in tropical regions.

Stony soils with high volumes of rock fragments have been numerically simulated in 3D using unit gradient and evaporation experiments Hydraulic properties of stony soils with different volumetric rock fragments have been obtained in a wide range of soil matric potentials The developed models of scaling the hydraulic conductivity of stony soils have been evaluated in unsaturated flow conditions

A laboratory experiment was carried out for 42 days to study co-selection for tolerance of tetracycline (TC), oxytetracycline (OTC) and chlortetracycline (CTC) in soils polluted with heavy metals (As, Cd, Zn, Cu, Ni, Cr and Pb). At high metal concentrations the bacterial communities show tolerance to the metal itself, taking place for all the metals tested in the long term. The bacterial communities of the soil polluted with heavy metals showed also long-term co-tolerance to TC, OTC, and CTC.

Yield-invigorating soils showed a higher content of organic matter and harboured unique bacterial community with greater diversity than yield-debilitating soils. And Chloroflexi was served as a keystone taxon in manipulating the interaction of bacterial community. Our findings help elucidate the role of soil microbiome in maintaining crop production and factors controlling the assembly of soil microbiome.

Soil structure is of central importance for soil functions. It is, however, ill defined. With the increasing availability of X-ray CT scanners more and more soils are scanned and an undisturbed image of the soil's structure is produced. Often a qualitative description is all that is derived from these images. We provide now a web based soil structure library where these images can be evaluated in a standardised quantitative way, and can be compared to a world-wide data set.

We present a new method to estimate the relative abundance of the dominant phyla and diversity of fungi in Australian soil. It uses state-of-the-art machine learning with publicly available data on soil and environmental proxies for edaphic, climatic, biotic and topographic factors, and visible–near infrared wavelengths. The estimates could serve to supplement the more expensive molecular approaches towards a better understanding of soil fungal abundance and diversity in agronomy and ecology.

Maps of soil properties made by machine-learning techniques are increasingly applied in earth surface process modelling and agronomy. Maps of the same area made by different methods appear quite different, and also differ from field-based polygon soil survey maps. We explore these differences both visually and numerically, using methods that quantify the spatial patterns. Readers can apply the methods to their areas of interest in the USA with supplied R Markdown scripts.

We have started to address this issue because the application of wetting agents is very widespread within the European Union and is often considered desirable because it increases the effectiveness of pesticides. While pesticides are thoroughly tested for their impact on the environment as a whole, testing for the effects of wetting agents is minimal. Today, there is no research on their impact on the soil environment.

The adverse effect of microplastic (MP) on soil biota and soil structure depend on MP particle size and surface characteristics. Since weathering plays a major role in the genesis of these, it must be considered in both the analysis of environmental MP and the production of artificial MP for laboratory experiments. This work integrates recent findings on adverse effects, the genesis of its surface characteristics and discusses how to reproduce them to receive close-to-nature designer MP.

In this manuscript, we describe changes in desert biocrust bacterial community during drought, rainfall, and dehydration in the Negev Desert. We followed the active bacterial community composition and their potential activity and showed that rainfall changes the bacterial community, triggers photosynthesis in soil phototrophs, and induces the production of extracellular polymeric substances that retain water during dehydration allowing bacterial cells to persist during the dehydration stage.

Adding an organo-mineral waste product from clean water treatment (WTR) is beneficial for a soil’s water retention, permeability, and strength properties. WTR added on its own significantly improves the shear strength and saturated hydraulic conductivity of soil. The co-application of WTR with compost provides the same benefits, whilst also improving soil’s water retention properties, which is beneficial for environmental applications where the soil health is critical.

We hypothesized the vertical distribution of SOC in temperate forest soils is limited by the percolating water in soil, and proposed a model derived from percolation theory to describe the vertical scaling of SOC. We evaluated the model with our field data and external data from published papers. Results show that regardless of the spatial variability of SOC, the vertical pattern of SOC follow the theoretical scaling well. There is also good agreement between prediction of SOC with observation.

To scrutinize the contribution of agricultural plastic covers to plastic pollution, we quantified soil-associated plastic debris (< 2 mm) in and around agricultural fields covered with different plastic types. PP fleeces and 50 μm thick PE films did not emit significant amounts of plastic debris into soil during their four-month use. However, thinner and perforated PE foils (40 μm) were associated with elevated PE contents of up to 35 μg/g. Their long-term use may thus favor plastic accumulation.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) and its labile fractions are influenced by a number of well-known abiotic factors and soil properties. These parameters interact with each other and vary in their influence on SOC depending on local conditions. To investigate the latter, the dependence of SOC accumulation on parameters and parameter combinations was statistically assessed that vary on a local scale depending on parent material, soil texture class and land use.

Freezing is increasingly used for X-ray micro computed tomography as required by the need to increase the resolution of the 3D images of the peat structure recorded. Two samples of a peat material were analyzed before and after freezing. Results showed an alteration of the structure in the whole range of pore size studied. They showed also that the consequences of the increase in the specific volume of water because of freezing appear as being responsible for the structure alteration recorded.

The study aims to analyze the ability of vegetation indices (VI’s) to map soil salt contents compared to the potential of evaporite mineral indices (EMI). The method used is based on simulated and satellite data acquired over two study areas: Kuwait-State and Omongwa salt-pan in Namibia. The obtained results demonstrated that it is impossible for VI’s to discriminate or to predict soil salinity. While, the EMI performed very well for the salt-affected soil classes mapping.