News tagged with soil
Soviet find of water on the Moon in the 1970s ignored by the West
(Phys.org) -- In August 1976 Luna 24 landed on the moon and returned to Earth with samples of rocks, which were found to contain water, but this finding was ignored by scientists in the West.
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Jun 01, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (39) |
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A genetic alternative to fertilizer
Several studies have shown that a lack of nitrogen in soils adversely affects crop yields. The modern use of nitrogen fertilizers has improved yields to meet expanding global food demand, but in some cases ...
Jun 01, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
The environment and pharmaceuticals and personal care products: What are the big questions?
Researchers at the University of York headed a major international review aimed at enhancing efforts to better understand the impacts of chemicals used in pharmaceuticals or in personal care products, such as cosmetics, soaps, ...
May 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (2) |
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Ancient plant-fungal partnerships reveal how the world became green
Prehistoric plants grown in state-of-the-art growth chambers recreating environmental conditions from more than 400 million years ago have shown scientists from the University of Sheffield how soil dwelling fungi played a ...
May 15, 2012 |
5 / 5 (5) |
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Study ups plant CO2 intake estimates
Plants may be able to limit the impact of our CO2 emissions even more than we previously thought, an innovative new experiment suggests.
May 21, 2012 |
5 / 5 (5) |
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Carnivorous plant traps worms with sticky leaves
Plants eat the darndest things. Scientists have discovered a small flowering plant living in the sandy soils of Brazil that traps nematodes, or roundworms, with sticky underground leaves -- and gobbles them ...
Jan 09, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (7) |
4
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Thawing permafrost 50 million years ago led to extreme global warming events
In a new study reported in Nature, climate scientist Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues elsewhere propose a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a ...
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
Apr 04, 2012 |
4.3 / 5 (28) |
47
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Solar wind samples give insight into birth of solar system
(PhysOrg.com) -- Two papers in this week's issue of Science report the first oxygen and nitrogen isotopic measurements of the Sun, demonstrating that they are verydifferent from the same elements on Earth. ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Jun 23, 2011 |
5 / 5 (8) |
5
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Plant diversity is key to maintaining productive vegetation
Vegetation, such as a patch of prairie or a forest stand, is more productive in the long run when more plant species are present, a new University of Minnesota study shows. The unprecedented long-term study of plant biodiversity ...
May 03, 2012 |
5 / 5 (2) |
2
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Being small has its advantages, if you are a leaf
(PhysOrg.com) -- The size of leaves can vary by a factor of 1,000 across plant species, but until now, the reason why has remained a mystery. A new study by an international team of scientists led by UCLA ...
Jul 06, 2011 |
4.8 / 5 (5) |
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Secret soil cracks linger underground
(Phys.org) -- Deep cracks in soil that appear during long dry spells can remain open underground even after they have visibly sealed on the surface, a new study has found.
Space & Earth / Earth Sciences
May 15, 2012 |
4.8 / 5 (4) |
1
USDA irrigation research: Good to the last drop
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are ensuring that farmers in the Pacific Northwest are benefiting from every drop of crop irrigation water.
May 23, 2012 |
4 / 5 (1) |
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Iowa State students take a lighter, more autonomous 'lunabot' to NASA competition
Jared Peterson, working away in the Caterpillar Mechatronics Laboratory in Iowa State University's Hoover Hall, recently held up a small electric motor.
May 21, 2012 |
5 / 5 (2) |
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Surface of Mars an unlikely place for life after 600 million year drought, say scientists
Mars may have been arid for more than 600 million years, making it too hostile for any life to survive on the planet's surface, according to researchers who have been carrying out the painstaking task of analysing ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Feb 03, 2012 |
4.3 / 5 (13) |
10
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Researchers report breakthrough on salt-tolerant durum wheat
A team of Australian scientists has bred salt tolerance into a variety of durum wheat that shows improved grain yield by 25% on salty soils.
Mar 11, 2012 |
5 / 5 (4) |
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Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers (soil horizons) of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics. It is composed of particles of broken rock that have been altered by chemical and environmental processes that include weathering and erosion. Soil differs from its parent rock due to interactions between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and the biosphere. It is a mixture of mineral and organic constituents that are in solid, gaseous and aqueous states. Soil particles pack loosely, forming a soil structure filled with pore spaces. These pores contain sol solution (liquid) and air (gas). Accordingly, soils are often treated as a three state system. Most soils have a density between 1 and 2 g/cm³. Soil is also known as earth: it is the substance from which our planet takes its name. Little of the soil composition of planet Earth is older than Tertiary and most no older than Pleistocene. In engineering, soil is referred to as regolith, or loose rock material.
For more information about Soil, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
