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.
Evaluating the behavior of a ring foundation resting on multi-layered soil is one of the important issues facing civil engineers. Many researchers have studied the behavior of ring foundation rests on multi-layered soil with vertical loads acting on the foundation. In real life ring foundation can be subjected to both vertical and horizontal loads at the same time due to wind or the presence of soil. In this research, the behavior of ring footing subjected to inclined load has been studied using PLAXIS software. Furthermore, the effect of multi-layered soil has been simulated in the model. The results showed that both vertical and horizontal stresses are mainly affected when the inclination angle of the load exceeded 45 degrees with a reduc
... Show MoreThis 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
... Show MoreThe current experiment was conducted to explore the effect of soil crude oil ( crude oil ) pollution on some wood properties of Casuarina equisetifolia. Four levels of pollution were applied on 40 (one-year) old seedlings . Measurements were taken by cutting the trees after two growth seasons from date of pollution .The studied Properties were fiber length, diameter, wall thickness, and specific gravity of external and internal wood. Results showed an adverse effect of pollution on fiber diameter more than on fiber length. While wall thickness did not affect. Fiber dimensions of external wood showed higher values than that of internal one, especially for fiber
... Show MoreExistence 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
... Show MoreThis 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.
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.
A field experiment was carried out at the research station of the College of Agriculture - Wasit University / Kut, during the fall season 2021 in soil with texture (sandy mixture) using the RCBD design in the arrangement of splintered plates and with three replications, to study the effect of spraying different combinations of organic emulsion (Appetizer) and NPK nano fertilizer with urea fertilizer on the growth of synthetic cultivars of yellow corn. The main panels included three synthetic varieties of yellow corn (Fajr1, Sumer and Baghdad3), which symbolized by (V1,V2,V3) in sequence, while the secondary panels included five fertilization treatments in which mineral fertilizer (urea) was used 46% nitrogen with the full recomme
... Show MoreIn this experimental and numerical analysis, three varieties of under-reamed piles comprising one bulb were used. The location of the bulb changes from pile to pile, as it is found at the bottom, center, and top of the pile, respectively.
One of the common geotechnical problems is the construction on soft soil and the improvement of its geotechnical properties to meet the design requirements. A stone column is one of the well-known techniques used to improve the geotechnical properties of soft soils. Sometimes thick layers of soft soil imposed the designer to use floating stone columns for improvement of such soil; in this case, the designer will be lost the end bearing of the stone column. In this study, the effects of several patterns of floating stone columns distribution under footing on the bearing capacity of soil and the distribution of excess porewater pressure are investigated. The soft soil used in this study has a very low undrained shear strength (cu) of
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