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The effect of soil acidity on root and rhizosheath development in wheat and barley seedlings was investigated in an acid Ferrosol soil to which various amounts of lime (CaCO3) were applied to modify soil Al concentrations (pH (CaCl2): 4.22 to 5.35 and Al (CaCl2 extract): 17.7 to 0.4 mg kg−1 soil; respectively), and Ferrosol soil from an adjacent location at the same site which had a higher Al concentration (pH 4.19; 29.2 mg kg−1 Al). The cereal lines were selected on the basis of differences in their rate of root growth, Al-resistance and root hair morphology. Root morphology was assessed after 7 days of growth. The length of fine (mainly lateral) roots of Al-sensitive genotypes was more sensitive to soil Al concentrations than that of the coarse (mainly primary) roots. The experiments demonstrated that even where root growth was protected by expression of the TaALMT1 gene for Al-resistance, root-soil contact was diminished by soil acidity because root hair length (in many lines), and root hair density and rhizosheath formation (all lines) were adversely affected by soil acidity. In the case of Al-sensitive lines, fine root growth and rhizosheath mass were reduced over much the same range of soil Al concentrations (i.e. >3–6 mg kg−1 Al). Although Al-resistant lines could maintain fine root length under these conditions, they were similarly unable to maintain rhizosheath mass. This finding may help to explain why Al-resistant wheats which yield relatively well in deep acid soils, may also benefit from application of lime to the surface layers of the soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A theoretical and experimental study of the unconfined penetration test (UP) method was conducted to determine the tensile strength of contaminated and compacted sand-bentonite mixtures, which are used widely in the landfill construction sites as a clay liner. To do this, the original UP device and experimental procedure were modified to reduce the measurement errors and named as the improved unconfined penetration (IUP) test. Experiments were carried out to examine the variation in tensile strength as a function of disk diameter, loading rate and pH level. The results of the experiments provided the following important findings. The tensile strength increases with an increase in the disk diameter. The tensile strength is not sensitive to the loading rate in the range of 0.1%/min–1.0%/min. A specimen compacted with a low pH value of water shows a high tensile strength, because a lower pH solution increases soil particle bonding stresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salinity is a highly important problem in arid and semi-arid regions. Consequently, the analysis of soil salinity plays a crucial role in environmental sciences. Environmental variables show spatial variability and statistical tools able to analyze and describe the spatial dependence and quantify the scale and intensity of the spatial variation are needed. Moreover, the spatial prediction has special importance for agricultural transformation of the land or for environmental restoration (selection of the most appropriate species adapted to soil salinity). In this paper we propose a methodological framework based on geostatistics to model the spatial dynamics of soil salinity measurements to further analyze the case of a region in southeastern Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]