29 research outputs found
Carbon in soils
Carbon is the fourth most common element in the galaxy(by mass) but does not even rank in the twelve most abundant elements on Earth. By far the most abundant source of carbon on Earth is in the crust as inorganic rocks such as calcite and limestone in marine and sedimentary deposits. These rocks have taken many millions of years to form. Other major inorganic sources are in the oceans and atmosphere
Nitrogen, soils and environment
The article discusses the risk of damaging the environment brought by nitrogen fertilisers which are used for increasing agricultural productivity. The oxidation of ammonium allows for the formation of nitrate. Troposphere ozone and aerosols are produced through the increase of reactive nitrogen in the atmosphere
Multiple small monthly doses of dicyandiamide (DCD) did not reduce denitrification in Waikato dairy pasture
The effectiveness of multiple small doses of the nitrification inhibitor dicyandiamide (DCD) to decrease denitrification under warm moist conditions was tested in a 1-year field trial on a grazed dairy pasture. DCD was applied approximately every 4 weeks as an aqueous spray onto ten replicate plots 3 days after rotational grazing by dairy cows. Each application was at the rate of 3 kg DCD haā»Ā¹, with a total annual application of 33 kg haā»Ā¹. Denitrification was assessed 5 days after each DCD application using the acetylene block method. At the end of the trial, the rate of degradation of DCD under summer conditions was measured. DCD significantly decreased the mean annual nitrate concentration by about 17%. Denitrification and denitrification enzyme activity were highly variable and no significant effect of DCD in decreasing denitrification was detected. In the summer month of December, DCD degraded rapidly with an estimated half-life of 5 Ā± 3 days (mean and standard deviation)
Anti-self-dual conformal structures with null Killing vectors from projective structures
Using twistor methods, we explicitly construct all local forms of
four--dimensional real analytic neutral signature anti--self--dual conformal
structures with a null conformal Killing vector. We show that is
foliated by anti-self-dual null surfaces, and the two-dimensional leaf space
inherits a natural projective structure. The twistor space of this projective
structure is the quotient of the twistor space of by the group action
induced by the conformal Killing vector.
We obtain a local classification which branches according to whether or not
the conformal Killing vector is hyper-surface orthogonal in . We give
examples of conformal classes which contain Ricci--flat metrics on compact
complex surfaces and discuss other conformal classes with no Ricci--flat
metrics.Comment: 43 pages, 4 figures. Theorem 2 has been improved: ASD metrics are
given in terms of general projective structures without needing to choose
special representatives of the projective connection. More examples (primary
Kodaira surface, neutral Fefferman structure) have been included. Algebraic
type of the Weyl tensor has been clarified. Final version, to appear in
Commun Math Phy
3-dimensional Cauchy-Riemann structures and 2nd order ordinary differential equations
The equivalence problem for second order ODEs given modulo point
transformations is solved in full analogy with the equivalence problem of
nondegenerate 3-dimensional CR structures. This approach enables an analog of
the Feffereman metrics to be defined. The conformal class of these (split
signature) metrics is well defined by each point equivalence class of second
order ODEs. Its conformal curvature is interpreted in terms of the basic point
invariants of the corresponding class of ODEs
Accumulation of soil organic C and change in C:N ratio after establishment of pastures on reverted scrubland in New Zealand
Rates of organic carbon accumulation and changes in C:N ratio are reported for 10 New Zealand soils converted to pastures from scrub. The data were derived from archive papers originally published in 1964, but which did not report on changes in the C contents of the soils. The soils had been sampled to 0ā7.5, 7.5ā15, and 15ā30 cm depths and chronosequences of up to 66 years obtained by selecting sites with differing times since pasture establishment. We calculated changes in the mass of C and N in the 0ā7.5 cm depth and compared that to the mass in the 0ā30 cm depth of soil. The shortest time over which organic matter change was assessed was 18 years and the longest was 66 years. Nine of the ten soils showed increases in the C contents of the 0ā7.5 cm depth soil, and a natural logarithmic curve generally gave a better fit to the time course data than a linear fit. However, when the full 0ā30 cm depth was considered, only two soils showed a significant increase in total C, changes in the C contents of other soils were non-significant, and two soils showed a decline in total C. The rates of change in the C contents were averaged over 0ā5 years, 5ā25 years and 25ā50 years. Across all 10 soils, the mean rates of accumulation of C in the 0ā7.5 cm depth were 1.07 (between 0 and 5 years), 0.27 (between 5 and 25 years) and 0.09 Mg C haā1 yearā1 (between 25 and 50 years) and significantly (P < 0.05) greater than zero. Very similar rates were obtained for the 0ā30 cm depth of soil with mean rates across all soils 1.01 (0ā5 years), 0.25 (5ā25 years) and 0.09 Mg C haā1 year ā1 (25ā50 years), respectively. In the 0ā7.5 cm depth of soil, total Kjeldahl N (TKN) increased significantly in seven of the 10 soils. When expressed for the 0ā30 cm depth of soil, only five soils still showed significant increases in TKN contents over time. Using the data for the 0ā7.5 cm depth, the predicted time (mean and standard error) for the soils to reach a C:N ratio of <10 was 46 Ā± 17 years. The soils were originally sampled over 44 years ago, suggesting that currently (2009), very few of them could be expected to have capacity for further N storage in organic matter in the surface soil unless there was an increase in soil C. Changes in soil C and N in the shallow upper soil layers are easily masked by the relatively small changes in C and N contents and much greater masses of soil at lower depths
Rates of accumulation of cadmium and uranium in a New Zealand hill farm soil as a result of long-term use of phosphate fertilizer
In New Zealand, phosphate (P) fertilisers used in agriculture are the main sources of the potentially toxic elements cadmium (Cd) and uranium (U), which occur as unwanted contaminants. New Zealand is developing draft soil guideline values (SGV) for maximum concentrations of Cd. To assess when soils under pasture for sheep production might reach a particular SGV, we analysed archived soil samples from a 23 yr P fertiliser trial. The pasture sites were at Whatawhata, North Island, New Zealand, and had received P fertiliser at the rates of 0, 30, 50 and 100 kg P haā»Ā¹ yrā»Ā¹. From 1983 to 1989, P was applied as single superphosphate, from 1989 to 2006, P was applied as triple superphosphate. Soils from replicate paddocks were sampled annually to a depth of 75 mm on easy (10ā20Ā°) and steep (30ā40Ā°) slope classes. Total P, Cd and U were analysed by ICP-MS after acid digestion. Data were analysed by fitting trend lines using linear mixed models for two slope classes and for two sampling periods 1983ā1989 and 1989ā2006 when the soil sampling method and fertiliser type had been changed.
The changes in total P, Cd and U were directly related to the type and amount of P fertiliser applied, the control treatment showed no significant change in P, Cd or U. At 50 and 100 kg P haā»Ā¹ yrā»Ā¹ there were generally linear increases in total P and total U, and the same trend line applied to both time periods, but the rate of increase in P was greater on the easy slope class. For Cd, a ābroken stickā model was needed to explain the data. Pre-1989, Cd increased in the 50 and 100 kg P haā»Ā¹ yrā»Ā¹ treatment (0.036ā0.045 mg kgā»Ā¹ yrā»Ā¹, respectively): post 1988 the rate of increase declined markedly on those two treatments (0.005ā0.015 mg kgā»Ā¹ yrā»Ā¹, respectively), and declined absolutely in the 30 kg P haā»Ā¹ yrā»Ā¹ treatments. The maximum content of Cd was in the 100 kg P haā»Ā¹ yrā»Ā¹ treatment which reached 0.931 mg Cd kgā»Ā¹ on the easy slope. For U there were steady linear increases for the 30, 50 and 100 kg P haā»Ā¹ treatments, and no significant difference between the steep and easy slopes, nor the two sampling periods, the maximum concentration obtained was 2.80 mg U kgā»Ā¹ on the 100 kg P haā»Ā¹ treatment. The results suggest that at rates of P fertiliser likely to be applied to hill farms (<50 kg P haā»Ā¹ yrā»Ā¹ ), and using P fertiliser with low Cd content, then the Cd concentration in this soil will never reach a SGV of 1 mg kgā»Ā¹