Soils form a unique and irreplaceable essential resource for all terrestrial organisms, including man. Soils form not only the very thin outer skin of the earth's crust that is exploited by plant roots for anchorage and supply of water and nutrients. Soils are complex natural bodies formed under the influence of plants, microorganisms and soil animals, water and air from their parent material, i.e. solid rock or unconsolidated sediments. Physically, chemically and mineralogically they usua...

Kids find that their imagination starts to grow when they learn about new things and rocks and minerals are a natural aspect of the outdoors but kids tend to not take time to really look closely at each one. Learning about the big and little details of both helps kids imagine where rocks have been, how they got to where they were found and what caused minerals to form and take shape; all of these things help children think in new and exciting ways.

This textbook outlines the physical, chemical, and biologic properties of the major sedimentary rocks, as revealed by petrographic microscopy, geochemical techniques, and field study. It covers the mineralogy, chemistry, textures, and sedimentary structures that characterise sedimentary rocks, and relates these features to the depositional origin of the rocks and their subsequent alteration by diagenetic processes during burial. In addition to detailed sections on siliciclastic and carbona...

The soil is the medium through which pollutants originating from human activities, both in agriculture and industry, move from the land surfaces to groundwater. Polluting substances are subject to complex physical, chemical and biological transformations during their movement through the soil. Their displacement depends on the transport properties of the water-air-soil system and on the molecular properties of the pollutants. Prediction of soil pollution and restoration of polluted soils r...

This book provides an overview of the distribution, properties, and function of soils in the U.S., including Alaska, Hawaii, and its Caribbean territories. It discusses the history of soil surveys and pedological research in the U.S., and offers general descriptions of the country’s climate, geology and geomorphology. For each Land Resource Region (LRR) – a geographic/ecological region of the country characterized by its own climate, geology, landscapes, soils, and agricultural practices –...

This book is a state-of-the-art review of the physical, chemical and mineralogical properties of anthropogenic soils, their genesis morphology and classification, geocultural setting, and strategies for reclamation, revitalization, use and management.

The Bear Brook Watershed in Maine (BBWM) is a long-term, whole-watershed study examining the effects of experimentally elevated N and S deposition on a treated watershed, in comparison to the adjacent reference watershed. The study is in a northern New England, USA, forested ecosystem, and focuses on soil and stream hydrological and biogeochemical processes, and chemical responses of vegetation. Relative to the reference watershed, the treated ecosystem has migrated biogeochemically toward...

The Qattara Depression is part of the Northwestern Desert in Egypt and is home to the second lowest point in Africa at -133 meters below sea level. Therefore, before any projects can be carried out in this area, we must first understand the geology of the land. The present study deals with the high-resolution sequence stratigraphic analysis of the Lower Miocene Moghra Formation outcrops in the Qattara Depression Region. The literature on the sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy of the M...

This Special Issue of Water, Air, and Soil Pollution offers original contributions from BIOGEOMON, The Third International Symposium on Ecosystem Behavior, which was held on the campus ofVillanova University from June 21-25, 1997. Previous meetings were held in Prague in 1987 and again in 1993. The BIOGEOMON series was initiated in 1987 when a group of researchers from the Czech Geological Survey organized a conference called GEOMON, Geochemical Monitoring in Representative Basins. GEOMON ...

Fifteen years have passed since a small group of researchers at the Czech Geo logical Survey boldly convened a conference called GEOMON, Geochemical Monitoring in Representative Basins, held in Prague in 1987. The focus of the original GEOMON conference was rather narrow - monitoring of element pools and fluxes on a small catchment scale. Signaling a desire to broaden the focus to a more biogeochemical orientation, the 1993 meeting, also in Prague, was renamed BIOGEOMON. Tofoster wider int...

Magic of Minerals and Rocks, featuring 135 splendid color photographs, ranges from vast rock-landscapes recorded in Europe, America, Australia, and Iceland right down to finely detailed images of a few square millimeters. Close-ups of crystals, gems, and fossils are alternated with micro-images of the minute textures and patterns that emerge from thin, translucent sections of rocks and minerals. Literally, as well as figuratively Dirk Wiersma, the photographer, 'zooms in' ...

Aimed at taking the mystery out of soil science, Soils: Principles, Properties and Management is a text for undergraduate/graduate students who study soil as a natural resource. Written in a reader-friendly style, with a host of examples, figures and tables, the book leads the reader from the basics of soil science through to complex situations, covering such topics as:the origin, development and classification of soilphysical, chemical and biological prope...