Improving poor soil with burned up biomass

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan have shown that torrefied biomass can improve the quality of poor soil found in arid regions. Published in Scientific Reports, the study showed that ...

Image: Root-zone soil moisture map

ESA's SMOS mission was launched in 2009 to provide global observations of soil moisture and ocean salinity – two important variables in Earth's water cycle. While this novel Earth Explorer satellite continues to advance ...

Combating climate change from the trenches

Land degradation is a serious cause for concern in sub-Saharan Africa where it affects more than two-thirds of its territory. The heavy reliance on an agriculture that is highly vulnerable to climate change, and the ever-increasing ...

Laser reveals water's secret life in soil

Most of us think nothing of rainfall or where it goes, unless it leads to flooding or landslides. But soil scientists have been studying how water moves across or through soil for decades. Daniel Hirmas, a professor at University ...

Increasing aridity reduces microbial diversity

A new study drawn from more than 80 dryland sites across the world indicates that increasing aridity reduces abundance and diversity of microbial communities which carry out for most of ecosystem services such as primary ...

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