myResearchSpace

I apologize for lazy blogging, with a promise to not just do listings of news articles about soils. If something REALLY interesting comes up I'll let people know, but really that's not what this blog is all about. Unfortunately that means that I have to get motivated about writing up articles I've read recently. At least I have done the reading ...

Week ending 5 October 2007... 1.  Arctic heat wave worries scientistsMelting permafrost creates threateningly unstable soils... - 4 Oct 2007 2.  Biodiesel facility plans interest canegrowers A change of land use for sugar cane growers may, incidentally, improve soil fertility... - 3 Oct 2007 3.  Authorities predict severe ...

from abc.net.au ...ignoring the usual stuff about ''home soil'', ''US soil'', ''Iraqi soil'', etc. ... Green group opposes northern irrigated crops plan The Mayor of Richmond Shire (North Queensland) is ... a bit sick of this salinity issue ... soil tests around Richmond ...[show]... perfectly good soils... ...

from abc.net.au ...ignoring the usual stuff about ''home soil'', ''US soil'', ''Iraqi soil'', etc. ... New soil samples prove the Arctic is ours: Russia - 20 Sep 2007 Soil analysis used for political gain - geochemical similarities between Russian soils and the ocean floor under the North Pole   ...

A website just begging to be blogged on this site - a gallery in Seattle, USA called SOIL (the link is to their March 2007 exhibition, ''More Dirt''. See also August 2006, How Does Grass Grow, and probably others). I haven't worked out why it's called SOIL. But not to blog this would be negligent. 

Some artists use the colours and textures in soil to create startlingly beautiful artwork. There are a few examples of this around (in no particular order)...Taufik Hidayat in IndonesiaJan Lang from Nebraska USATeresa Murak, PolandYüksel Arslan, Turkey...and see this compilation by, of all people, NASA [added 2007.09.19]The image at right does not ...

It now seems as though someone may have seen a Baiji, and that perhaps they're not extinct after all! Read more of the good news at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/30/2019106.htm.

The United States Department of Agriculture provides numerous world maps showing the global distribution of key soil properties - worth checking out at http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/. At right is the thumbnail of their World Soil Orders map.

An update on an earlier post (''All the Baiji are gone'') - it seems that this unique aquatic mammal may not, after all, be extinct despite being ''the first large vertebrate to be declared extinct in more than 50 years''. Apparently Professor Wang Ding, an expert involved in the 2006 Baiji survey still holds some hope that a few Baiji may yet ...

this guy blogged us . . . so I'm blogging his blog. A true 21st-century return compliment. So, head for transect points written by Philip Small. Prolific (at least a post a week for 2007, I reckon) and eclectic (soils news from all around the place). Check it out.