IUSS Alert 55
(November 2009)
Information for and from the global soil science community
19th WCSS – Papers can still be submitted
!
The
19th World Congress of Soil Science will be held in Australia,
1-6 August 2010 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition
Centre.
The submission dates are now as follows: Oral Papers - The
final close date for papers to be considered for oral
presentation at the Congress is now
30 November 2009.
Poster Papers - Papers to be considered for poster presentation
will now be accepted until
31st January 2010.
Early registration is now also open. A comprehensive list of
tours can now be seen on the website. These include Pre- and
Post-Congress Tours, in addition to an interesting selection of
shorter Congress Excursions available just before or after the
week of the Congress. See
www.19wcss.org.au
Conferences and meetings
International Workshop on Quantitative Soil Spectroscopy,
GFZ Potsdam, Germany, 15-16 April 2010. This workshop is
organized by Eyal Ben Dor and Sabin Chabrillat, as part of
"Hyperspectral Applications for Soil" working group within the
EUFAR framework project and the ISPRS technical commission VII/3
"Information extraction from Hyperspectral Data". The workshop
will cover spectral analysis of soil as was developed over the
past decade by worldwide experts. The workshop intend to discuss
past, present and future activities in quantitative analysis of
soil spectra as well as applications already implemented for
hyperspectral remote sensing information as acquired from air
and space domains. The workshop will include frontal lectures of
experts, an analytical course, demonstration of new software and
instrumentation dedicated to analyze soil spectra and a round
table. The workshop
is not
opened to the public (place is limited) and interested partners
are requested to contact the organizers prior submission an
abstract. The deadline for the abstract is January 22, 2010.
For more information, please see the home page of the EUFAR
website on
www.eufar.net
under "What's new"
I
nternational
Conference on Soil Classification and Reclamation of Degraded
Lands in Arid Environments and Launching of Abu Dhabi Soil
Survey Report,
Abu Dhabi, UAE, 17-19 May, 2010. The soils display extensive
spatial and temporal variability in their properties, and
therefore, their understanding, soil classification, land use
management and reclamation are of prime importance. Soil
information provides foundation for potential uses and problems
that may arise and therefore is the key for policy and decision
making, especially in arid regions facing severe water scarcity.
The co-occurrence of the International conference and launching
of the Abu Dhabi Soil Survey Report will provide excellent
opportunities to the international scientific community to share
the world soils information leading to proper land use
management, and reclamation of degraded land in arid
environments. Participants with accepted papers will be fully or
partially funded depending on innovative research and quality of
papers. The deadline for Abstracts submission is 30th
November 2009. For submission and more information, see
www.ead.ae/en/events/conference.on.soil.clasification.aspx
New Publications
Manual
of Methods for Soil and Land Evaluation.
Editor Edoardo A. C. Costantini.
Science
Publishers, Enfield, 2009. 600 pp. ISBN 978-1-57808-571-2. The
goal of the manual is to supply an operational tool for
pedologists, agronomists, environmentalists, and all of the
other specialists who carry out land evaluation for agriculture
and forestry or, more generally, stakeholders and policy makers
who make decisions at the local level based on the knowledge of
the nature of soil. Discussion of the topics is not only
technical and operational, but also in-depth and didactic;
therefore, the text may also be used as a valid complement for
students majoring in subjects that involve soil use, management
and conservation. The literature offers a wide choice of
possible soil and land evaluation methods, while knowledge of
the relationships existing between the physical characteristics
of lands, particularly those of soils, and the requirements of
specific uses is limited.
Chemical
Elements in Plants and Soil: Parameters Controlling Essentiality.
By Fränzle, Stefan 2009, Approx. 180 p., Hardcover ISBN:
978-90-481-2751-1. Earlier works on plant essential elements
have revealed a series of complicated, counter-intuitive
relationships among various chemical elements in different plant
species, due to both unlike usage of certain elements in plants
and to different carriers effecting resorption and transport. In
an attempt to provide a more coherent theory behind plant
mineral nutrition, this groundbreaking book adopts a very
different approach from the existing literature, presenting an
explanation of the essentiality of chemical elements in
biological systems and the application of stoichiometric network
analysis (SNA) to the biological system of elements. Starting
with data from biochemical environmental analysis, and a
discussion of the phenomena involved in metal ion partition and
autocatalytic behaviour, conditions and criteria controlling the
partition of metals into biomass are investigated. Several rules
are derived and investigated in terms of their interaction both
in comparisons among contemporary organisms and in terms of
evolution. This allows the construction, for example of a map
which directly traces the biological feature of essentiality to
parameters of coordination chemistry.
Plant
Nutrition of Greenhouse Crops.
By Sonneveld, Cees, Voogt, Wim. 2009, XV, 431 p., Hardcover
ISBN: 978-90-481-2531-9.
Greenhouse cultivation is noted for its high uptake of minerals,
consistent climatic conditions, exclusion of natural
precipitation and control of salt accumulation. Acknowledging
that plant nutrition in greenhouse cultivation differs in many
essentials from field production, this volume details specific
information about testing methods for soils and substrates in a
greenhouse environment. It does so while offering a universally
applicable analysis. This is based on the composition of the
soil and substrate solutions, methods for the interpretation of
tissue tests, and crop responses on salinity and water supply in
relation to fertilizer application. Fertilizer additions,
related to analytical data of soil and substrate samples, are
presented for a wide range of vegetable and ornamental crops.
The subject is especially apt now as substrate growing offers
excellent possibilities for the optimal use of water and
nutrients, as well as the potential for sustainable production
methods for greenhouse crops.
Fire
Effects on Soils and Restoration Strategies.
Edited by: Artemi Cerdà and Peter R. Robichaud. 2009 Science
Publishers, USA. ISBN 978-1-57808-526-2. This book has been
published a decade after Fire’s Effects on Ecosystems by DeBano,
Neary, and Folliott (1998), and builds on their foundation to
update knowledge on natural post-fire processes and describe the
use and effectiveness of various restoration strategies that may
be applied when human intervention is warranted. The chapters in
this book, written by leading scientists, have been compiled to
provide relevant and accessible information to students, land
managers, and policy-makers as well as other scientists.
www.iuss.org
