China 
Africa 
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Nature of soil and rock
Published in Hsai-Yang Fang, John L. Daniels, Introductory Geotechnical Engineering, 2017
Hsai-Yang Fang, John L. Daniels
Soil is truly a unique creation. It differs from the parent rock below in morphology, physical properties, and biological characteristics. The soil mantle of the earth may be termed the “pedosphere” in contact with the atmosphere, the lithosphere, and the hydrosphere. A soil system is a dynamic system subject to temperature, moisture, and biologic cycles and it develops in a certain genetic direction under the influence of climate. The rate of this development is influenced by the parent material, vegetation, and human activity. Coupling the pedologic perspective with the particle-energy-field theory (Ch. 1), soil is constantly under the influence of mechanical, thermal, electric, magnetic, and radiation energies.
Earth Systems and Cycles
Published in Dexter Perkins, Kevin R. Henke, Adam C. Simon, Lance D. Yarbrough, Earth Materials, 2019
Dexter Perkins, Kevin R. Henke, Adam C. Simon, Lance D. Yarbrough
The pedosphere (the world’s soils) contains the same elements as the crust, but also other elements that are essential for plant growth and sustaining life, including carbon and nitrogen. Carbon is the most important element in all organic matter, making it dominant in the biosphere. Oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, too, are essential components of living organisms and thus important in the biosphere. The atmosphere largely consists of nitrogen and oxygen gases, N2 and O2.
Bioprospecting of Microbial Diversity for Sustainable Agriculture and Environment
Published in Vineet Kumar, Vinod Kumar Garg, Sunil Kumar, Jayanta Kumar Biswas, Omics for Environmental Engineering and Microbiology Systems, 2023
Hiren K. Patel, Nensi K. Thumar, Priyank D. Patel, Azaruddin V. Gohil
Soil is the uppermost thin and fine layer on earth also known as pedosphere having various different biotic and abiotic components. Biotic components include various organisms of macro-, meso-, microfauna, and various floras. All the microbes that cohabitate and interact with plants collectively are known as plant microbiota (Bulgarelli et al. 2013). Abiotic components include water, gases, different minerals, and organic compounds. Soil formation takes place through the interaction of various earths’ spheres – atmosphere; hydrosphere, a watery part; lithosphere, a rocky portion, and biosphere, which is a combination of all spheres (Nortcliff et al. 2000). Soil has various sized particles, and based on their size, they are divided in to sand, silt, and clay. Particle sizes of sand, silt, and clay include 63–2000, 2–63, and less than 2 μm, respectively. Fine-sized pores, which are having diameter less than 0.2 μm, can hold water molecules so strongly that they are not freely available for plants to absorb. While medium-sized pores of soil having a diameter ranging between 0.2 and 50 μm can hold water with such efficiency that it is available to roots of plants and other microbes (Nortcliff et al. 2000). Various factors such as soil texture, pH, temperature, moisture content, nutritional availability, and decomposition will determine the microbial community structure of particular soil. Microbes present in soil greatly affect the fertility of the soil and determine which type of plant or crop yield can be obtained from soil. Soil has various functions; for example, it provides protection, habitat, various regulatory functions, waste removal system, anchoring to plants, and raw materials. Soil also provides food for all living organisms. To fulfil the need for food for increasing population day by day, humans have developed food production in agriculture system through various methods and techniques. Modern agricultural system includes applications of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Impact of agricultural management practices on soil carbon sequestration and its monitoring through simulation models and remote sensing techniques: A review
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2022
Agniva Mandal, Atin Majumder, S. S. Dhaliwal, A. S. Toor, Pabitra Kumar Mani, R. K. Naresh, Raj K. Gupta, Tarik Mitran
Carbon is fourth abundant element in the universe and it is the backbone of all kinds of structural and functional compounds necessary for life. There are three forms of C present on earth viz. (l) elemental (incomplete combustion products of organic matter (OM) and from geologic sources), (2) inorganic (largely present in carbonate minerals, such as calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and dolomite [CaMg(CO3)2] and (3) organic (Nieder & Benbi, 2008; Schumacher, 2002; The Royal Society, 2005). Different OC forms are mainly decomposed or partially decomposed products of plants, animals and microbes. The presence of a variety of forms of OC in soils could be seen, which include freshly deposited litter like leaves, branches, twigs and higher decomposed forms such as humus (Buringh, 1984). According to Kogel-Knabner (2002) and Kramer and Gleixner (2006), source materials responsible for soil organic matter (SOM) formation are mainly microbial biomass and plant litter. Cycling of these three forms of C (elemental, inorganic and organic) between the reservoirs such as biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere of the Earth through biogeochemical processes such as photosynthesis, respiration, burning, burial of OM, decomposition and weathering processes (West, 2008) could be defined as C cycle.
The limits of lead (Pb) phytoextraction and possibilities of phytostabilization in contaminated soil: a critical review
Published in International Journal of Phytoremediation, 2020
Sara Perl Egendorf, Peter Groffman, Gerry Moore, Zhongqi Cheng
Humans exert a range of impacts on Earth and have left an extensive array of potentially toxic elements and compounds in soil, the pedosphere. Significant attention has been dedicated to the remediation of contaminated sites, notably with the assistance of plants (Reeves and Brooks 1983; Cunningham and Berti 1993; Baker et al. 1994; Raskin et al.1994). The field of phytoremediation, and phytotechnology more broadly, seeks to understand and promote the use of plants to remediate degraded soil and water and restore ecosystem services in managed landscapes (IPS 2019). Plants, in concert with microbes and various abiotic conditions, are capable of remediation through a variety of mechanisms, either through the rhizosphere with rhizofiltration, phytostabilization, and phytodegradation, or through above-ground biomass with phytovolatilization and phytoextraction (Salt et al.1995; Chaney et al.2002).
Variegated Pedospheric Matrices Based Pyrzaole Fungicide Chemico-physical and Biological Degradation Elucidation
Published in Soil and Sediment Contamination: An International Journal, 2021
Palwasha Gul, Khuram Shahzad Ahmad, Shaan Bibi Jaffri, Daoud Ali
Pesticide molecules upon entering pedosphere are usually sorbed in the soil particles. Sorption is an important phenomenon that governs the fate of any pesticide in soils. The extent of sorption is directly impacted by soils’ physicochemical characteristics (Ali et al. 2019; Amjad et al. 2019). Pesticides invading soils are exposed to a number of physical, chemical, and biological reactions, which alter the pristine pesticide into daughter products, that can be even more harmful than the original product. Therefore, naturally occurring soil–pesticide processes of sorption, hydrolysis, photolysis (abiotic), and microbial degradation (biotic) signify the integral conditions that any pesticide undergoes (Das et al. 2020; Khalid et al. 2020). Physicochemical processes in this regard can be referred to as those triggered by the presence of moisture, breaking down the original pesticide structure via hydrolytic mechanism. Another such process can be the effective interplay of solar radiations breaking down pesticide molecules in daughter products. Photolytic reactions signify integral transformative reactions that are associated with impacting the pesticides’ fate in the soils and aquatic environments. In case of naturally occurring photolytic reactions, the energy is directly received from sun, causing excitation of the pesticide molecules, and thus can be referred to as solar photocatalysis. Photo-alteration caused due to reception of solar radiations causes significant changes in pesticide molecules. In this way, pesticide or any other contaminant is disintegrated by means of production of intermediates that are highly reactive in nature (Jaffri and Ahmad 2020; Tahir et al. 2019).