myResearchSpace

[Musings by Talitha Santini] The first article for the revived Journal Club was ‘Jarosite as an indicator of water-limited chemical weathering on Mars' (Elwood Madden et al. [2004] Nature, 431:821-823), chosen by Talitha because it was a short and reasonably simple article about soils on another planet. The authors used observations of ...

FAREWELL TO THE EARTH Christopher James We buried him with a potato in each hand on New Year’s Day when the ground was hard as luck, wearing just cotton, his dancing shoes plus a half bottle of pear cider to stave off the thirst. In his *** pocket we left a taxi number and ...

[Edit at 29 May 2009 - the date has been shifted to Wednesday 3 June]   The poster at right was prepared by Talitha to publicise the first meeting of the Soil Science Journal Club for 2009...   ...we'll be discussing the article: Madden MEE, Bodnar RJ, Rimstidt JD. 2004. Jarosite as an indicator of water-limited chemical ...

The journal Urban Ecosystems has just published a Special Issue on Soils. As our planet and its human populations become increasingly urbanised, this would seem to be a growth area for the earth and ecological sciences. Some of the articles from this issue of the journal: A comparison of soil organic carbon stocks between residential turf ...

Musings on:Anand RR, Cornelius M, Phang C, 2007. Use of vegetation and soil in mineral exploration in areas of transported overburden, Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia: a contribution towards understanding metal transportation processes.Geochemistry-Exploration Environment Analysis, 7: 267-288. The use of soils and vegetation as sample media for ...

A new Comment has been posted in reply to A soil scientist's lament, by Professor Philippe Baveye (the author of the article mused upon in the original post). It's well worth reading. You can get to it by clicking here, too (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

...musings on Amundson R, Ewing S, Dietrich W, Sutter B, Owen J, Chadwick OA, Nishiizumi K, Walvoord M, McKay C. 2008. On the in situ aqueous alteration of soils on Mars. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 72:3845-3864. It's great when an article related to one's own discipline is about something exotic, and it would be hard to imagine a more exotic ...

Musings on:Byrne LB, 2007. Habitat structure: A fundamental concept and framework for urban soil ecology. Urban Ecosystems, 10:255-274. The title's claim of a ''fundamental concept and framework'' are ambitious, and this paper has a few shortcomings that leave it falling somewhat short of such lofty goals. Despite this, the stated overall ...

Musings on: Baveye, P. C. & Jacobson A. R. (2008). Soil science education and the ''age of money'': reflections and concerns for the near future. Water, Air and Soil Pollution 187:1-4. This was a guest editorial in Water, Air and Soil Pollution, and I decided it to be worth reading; there's much to be said for a catchy title. The topic ...

Musings on:Stewart CE, Paustian K, Conant RT, Plant AF, Six A. 2007. Soil carbon saturation: concept, evidence and evaluation. Biogeochemistry 86:19-31. On first glance I thought that this was too obvious to be significant - if carbon input fluxes (e.g. litter fall) are increased (in a single step), then of course soil carbon will increase, but ...