High tunnels, or unheated plastic greenhouses, are becoming increasingly popular among organic vegetable growers across the United States. However, the intensive production typical of these systems presents soil health challenges, including salinization due to high fertilizer or compost inputs coupled with lack of rainfall to leach salts. Legume cover crops may improve soil health in high tunnels by reducing the need for external inputs, while adding organic matter. We tested the soil health effects of a winter hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth) cover crop used to replace fertilizer N in an organic tomato cropping system in high tunnels. Studies were replicated across three sites differing in climate and soil type (Kansas, Kentucky, and Minnesota) over three years. We measured vetch cover crop effects on a suite of soil health indicators, including potentially mineralizable nitrogen (PMN), permanganate oxidizable carbon, and microbial biomass. Preliminary results suggest that vetch effects on PMN were highly variable. Soil mineral N, meanwhile, was often lower in the vetch treatment than in a fertilized control, both in spring and in fall. While further work on vetch effects on crop yields is needed, our results suggest that even legume cover crops such as vetch have the potential to reduce nitrate leaching.
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This study presents a comprehensive set of laboratory works for the examined soil layers extracted from Baghdad city (specifically from Alkadhimya, Alaitaifiya, and Alhurriya) to illustrate their engineering properties. The researchers have adopted the unified soil classification system for soil classification purposes. Also, the direct shear test was performed for soil samples with various degrees of saturation (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). The test results have shown a significant reduction in cohesion property with higher moisture content within soil samples. Also, a noticeable reduction in angle of internal friction value has occurred with such changes. Furthermore, it has been found that the bearing capacity of unsaturated soi
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This research presents a method of using MATLAB in analyzing a nonhomogeneous soil (Gibson-type) by
estimating the displacements and stresses under the strip footing during applied incremental loading
sequences. This paper presents a two-dimensional finite element method. In this method, the soil is divided into a number of triangle elements. A model soil (Gibson-type) with linearly increasing modulus of elasticity with depth is presented. The influences of modulus of elasticity, incremental loading, width of footing, and depth of footing are considered in this paper. The results are compared with authors' conclusions of previous studies.
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Influence of metal nanoparticles synthesized by microorganisms upon soil-borne microscopic fungus Aspergillus terreus K-8 was studied. It was established that the metal nanoparticles synthesized by microorganisms affect the enzymatic activity of the studied culture. Silver nanoparticles lead to a decrease in cellulase activity and completely suppress the amylase activity of the fungus, while copper nanoparticles completely inhibit the activity of both the cellulase complex and amylase. The obtained results imply that the large-scale use of silver and copper nanoparticles may disrupt biological processes in the soil and cause change in the physiological and biochemical state of soil-borne microorganisms as well.
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Existence of these soils, sometimes with high gypsum content, caused difficult problems to the buildings and strategic projects due to dissolution and leaching of gypsum by the action of waterflow through soil mass. In this research, a new technique is adopted to investigate the performance of replacement and geosynthetic reinforcement materials to improve the gypseous soil behavior through experimential set up manufactured loaclally specially for this work. A series of tests were carried out using steel container (600*600*500) mm. A square footing (100*100) mm was placed at the center of the top surface of the bed soil. The results showed that the most effective thickness for the dune sand layer with geotextile at the interface, within
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A simple, accurate and sensitive spectrophotometric way is used to determine Bisacodyl in pure and pharmaceutical preparations. The proposed method depends on using 2,4-Dinitrophenylhydrazine as chromogenic reagent . The method was based on the oxidative coupling reaction of Bisacodyl with 2,4-Dinitrophenylhydrazine with Sodium periodate in the presence of sodium hydroxide as alkaline media to form red water soluble dye product , that has a maximum absorption at ?max 522nm . Beer ,s law is obeyed in the concentration of (2.00–20.00) ?g.ml -1 .The molar absorptivity is (6505) L.mol-1.cm-1,a sandall sensitivity of(0.0555) ?g.cm-2), correlation coefficient of (0.9970) , Limitof detection (LOD) (0.0312 ?g.ml-1), limit of Quantitation (LOQ) (
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Air stripping for removal of Trichloroethylene (TCE), Chloroform (CF) and Dichloromethane (DCM) from water were studied in a bubble column (0.073 m inside dia. and 1.08 m height with several sampling ports). The contaminated water was prepared from deionized water and VOCs. The presence of VOCs in feed solution was single, binary or ternary components. They were diluted to the concentrations ranged between 50 mg/l to 250 mg/l. The experiments were carried out in batch experiments which regard the bubble column as stirred tank and only gas was bubbled through stationary liquid. In this case transient measurements of VOC concentration in the liquid phase and the measured concentra
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Image of landsate-7 taken by thematic mapper was used and classified using supervised method. Results of supervised classification indicated presence of nine land cover classes. Salt-soils class shows the highest reflectance value while water bodies' class shows the lowest values. Also the results indicated that soil properties show different effects on reflectance. There was a high significant positive relation of carbonate, gypsum, electric conductivity and silt content, while there was a week positive relation with sand and negative relation with organic matter, water content, bulk density and cataion exchange capacity.
Image of landsate-7 taken by thematic mapper was used and classified using supervised method. Results of supervised classification indicated presence of nine land cover classes. Salt-soils class shows the highest reflectance value while water bodies' class shows the lowest values. Also the results indicated that soil properties show different effects on reflectance. There was a high significant positive relation of carbonate, gypsum, electric conductivity and silt content, while there was a week positive relation with sand and negative relation with organic matter, water content, bulk density and cataion exchange capacity.