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Books in Soil science

The Soil Science collection provides comprehensive coverage of soil chemistry, physics, microbiology, fertility, and land management. Featuring innovative research and practical applications, these resources assist soil scientists, agronomists, and researchers in promoting sustainable land use, soil health, and environmental protection. Emphasizing nutrient cycling, contamination remediation, and climate change impacts, the portfolio offers actionable insights for sustainable agriculture and ecosystem management.

  • Interrelationships Between Microorganisms and Plants in Soil

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 18
    • English
    These proceedings present the most up-to-date information on the interrelations between microorganisms and plants in the rhizosphere, and the possibility of utilizing these relationships to improve plant growth, health and yields. The application of some biological preparations may in the future partially replace the use of agrochemicals and thus contribute to environmental improvement and enhancement of the quality of soil, water and foodstuffs.The Symposium brought together specialists from fifteen countries to assess the advances in a field which has recently attracted considerable interest and is also important for society at large. The book contains over sixty contributions from rhizosphere microbiologists, focusing on the study of the function of microorganisms in the root system of crop plants and in its immediate vicinity, the effect of the plants themselves on this function, the interrelationships among different microorganisms in the rhizosphere and the elucidation of the mechanisms of microbial action in the agroecosystem. All these lines of research are intimately associated with the problems of soil fertility and crop yields, which in turn have a direct bearing on the nutrition of mankind and on environmental protection. The papers have been divided into four topics: symbiotic microorganisms in the root system; associative microorganisms in the root system; soil-borne phytopathogenic and phytotoxic microorganisms; and microbial preparations stimulating growth and improving the plant health. Each section starts with invited lectures from outstanding specialists. The work includes numerous tables, figures and references.The volume is primarily directed at soil microbiologists, plant pathologists and physiologists, ecologists as well as specialists in agronomy and environmental protection.
  • Chemistry of Soil Organic Matter

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 17
    • K. Kumada
    • English
    Despite the large number of papers and books published on soil organic matter (humus), our knowledge of the subject is still very limited, as is our knowledge of humic acid. The author of this book began to study humus at the end of the 1940s and continued until 1984 when he retired from Nagoya University. With the intention of establishing a systematic understanding of soil organic matter, he has compiled facts and a discussion of humus based on his extensive experimental results during the past 40 years.In this book, humic acids are classified into A, B, Rp and P types, based on their optical properties. The elementary composition and other chemical properties of humic acid types are shown to be regularly different from each other. A new method for humus composition analysis applied to various kinds of soils in Japan and several other countries indicates that the diversity of humus compositions of soils is systematically understandable. These findings lead the author to novel theories on the chemical configuration and formation of humic acids and humic substances. Diagenesis of humus under terrestrial conditions is illustrated as to the buried humic horizons of Black soil (Andosol).The book will be useful not only to soil scientists and agronomists but also to geochemists, oceanographers, limnologists, water scientists, biologists and chemists who are dealing with organic matter in terrestrial, aquatic, and sedimentary environments.
  • Antarctica: Soils, Weathering Processes and Environment

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 16
    • I.B. Campbell + 1 more
    • English
  • Remote Sensing in Soil Science

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 15
    • M.A. Mulders
    • English
    This book provides comprehensive coverage of remote sensing techniques and their application in soil science. A clear, step-by-step approach to the various aspects ensures that the reader will gain a good grasp of the subject so that he can apply the techniques to his own field of study.The book opens with a thorough introduction to the physical aspects of electromagnetic radiation and the technical aspects of remote sensing and image processing. This is followed by a discussion of the methods for interpreting remote sensing data, and their application to soils, vegetation, and land as a whole.As the interpretation of soil conditions is based on many aspects (i.e. soil surface, vegetation, land use, land form), the scope of the book is correspondingly broad. It will therefore provide much useful information for students and scientists in soil science, geography, geology, hydrology, ecology, agriculture and civil engineering.
  • Soil Physics with BASIC

    Transport Models for Soil-Plant Systems
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 14
    • G.S. Campbell
    • English
    This book covers material taught in a graduate-level soil physics course at Washington State University. While most soil physics courses dwell mainly on deriving rather than solving the differential equations for transport, the author's approach is to focus on solutions. Graduate students in agricultural and biological sciences usually have a good working knowledge of algebra and calculus, but not of differential equations. In order to teach methods for solving very difficult differential equations with difficult boundary conditions using fairly simple mathematical tools, the author uses numerical procedures on microcomputers to solve the differential equations. Numerical methods convert differential equations into algebraic equations which can be solved using conventional methods of linear algebra.This book reflects the philosophy used in the course. Each chapter introduces soil physics concepts, generally in the conventional way. Most chapters then go on to develop simple computer programs to solve the equations and illustrate the points made in the discussion. Problems at the end of each chapter help the reader practice using the concepts introduced in the chapter. The problems and computer programs are an integral part of the presentation, and readers are strongly encouraged to experiment with each model until both the working of the model and the concepts it teaches are familiar. Although the programs are generally short and relatively simple, they are suitable for use as submodels in large, general-purpose models of the soil-plant-atmospher... system, and have been used in this way by the author and by several of his students.Teachers and students alike will welcome this new textbook. It will enable graduate students to understand and solve transport problems which exist in field situations, and will provide them with a good working knowledge of soil physics - fundamental to so many other areas in soil, plant and engineering sciences.
  • Elements of Soil Physics

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 13
    • P. Koorevaar + 2 more
    • English
  • Introduction to Soil Physics

    • 1st Edition
    • Daniel Hillel
    • English
    This book is a unified, condensed, and simplified version of the recently issued twin volumes, Fundamentals of Soil Physics and Applications of Soil Physics. Nonessential topics and complexities have been deleted, and little prior knowledge of the subject is assumed. An effort has been made to provide an elementary, readable, and self-sustaining description of the soil's physical properties and of the manner in which these properties govern the processes taking place in the field. Consideration is given to the ways in which the soil's processes can be influenced, for better or for worse, by man. Sample problems are provided in an attempt to illustrate how the abstract principles embodied in mathematical equations can be applied in practice. The author hope that the present version will be more accessible to students than its precursors and that it might serve to arouse their interest in the vital science of soil physics.
  • Fundamentals of Soil Physics

    • 1st Edition
    • Daniel Hillel
    • English
    This book is not, in any case, in total defiance of the Wise Old Man's admonition, for it is not an entirely new book. Rather, it is an outgrowth of a previous treatise, written a decade ago, entitled "Soil and Water: Physical Principles and Processes." Though that book was well enough received at the time, the passage of the years has inevitably made it necessary to either revise and update the same book, or to supplant it with a fresh approach in the form of a new book which might incorporate still-pertient aspects of its predecessor without necessarily being limited to the older book's format or point of view.
  • Soil Organic Matter

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 8
    • M. Schnitzer + 1 more
    • English
  • Fundamentals of transport phenomena in porous media

    Based on the proceedings of the first International Symposium on the Fundamentals of Transport Phenomena in Porous Media, Technion City, Haifa, Israel, 23-28 February, 1969
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 2
    • English