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 ...

[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 ...

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 ...

The journal Nature is marking The Year of Planet Earth in 2008 with free access to their Year of Planet Earth feature - find it at http://www.nature.com/nature/supplements/collections/yearofplanetearth/. Many of the articles in the feature have relevance to soil science: From landscapes into geological history - Philip A. Allen Nature 451, ...

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 ...

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1st Perennial classics Ed. New York : HarperPerennial, 1998, 288 p. (first published 1974). I re-read this book over the last month or so. It's wonderful - a rare book of incredible linguistic beauty. It should be compulsory reading for anyone with an interest in the natural sciences, if only to remind ...

Article for 2 July 2007:Parton W, Silver WL, Burke IC, Grassens L, Harmon ME, Currie WS, King JY, Adair EC, Brandt LA, Hart SC, Fasth B, 2007. Global-scale similarities in nitrogen release patterns during long-term decomposition. Science 315:361-364. Finding a global pattern in nature would be a worthy achievement for any scientist, and this is ...