IUSS Alert - 40 (August 2008)
Information for and from the global soil science community
New on the IUSS website
Several new sections have been added to the IUSS website in recent months:
All IUSS bulletins number 1 (1952) to 112 (May 2008) are now as PDF on the web: 1952-1974 (F.A. van Baren), 1974-1978 (R. Dudal), 1978-1990 (W.G. Sombroek), 1990-2002 (W. Blum).
All World Soil Science Congress proceedings have been scanned and are available as PDF. About half of all proceedings are downloadable from the IUSS website - each book is a PDF and the files are sometimes huge (up to 500 Mb). As all PDFs exceed 25 Gb the website is being migrated to another server - eventually it will all be on the IUSS website.
Pictures and historical documents have been scanned and these include the ISSS reconstruction from 1950, old membership lists, historical accounts and over 50 high resolution pictures from 1909 to 1990.
Best Paper in Pedometrics 2007
Nominations have been made for the, "Best Paper in Pedometrics 2007". We urge all members of IUSS to examine these papers, and to vote by email to with "Best Paper 2007" in the subject line. List the papers by number (as below) in order of preference, with the paper you regard as the most worthy winner listed first. The vote will end on 30th November 2008. Certificates will be presented at Pedometrics 2009 in Beijing.
1. Kerry, R. & Oliver, M.A. 2007. The analysis of ranked observations of soil structure using indicator geostatistics. Geoderma, 140, 397-416.
2. Lark, R.M. 2007. Inference about soil variability from the structure of the best wavelet packet basis. European Journal of Soil Science, 58, 822-831.
3. Li, W. 2007. Transiograms for characterizing spatial variability of soil classes. Soil Science Society of America Journal, 71, 881-893.
4. Viscarra Rossel, R.A., Taylor, H.J. & McBratney, A.B. 2007. Multivariate calibration of hyperspectral x-ray energy spectra for proximal soil sensing. European Journal of Soil Science, 58, 343-353.
5. Weller, U., Zipprich, M., Sommer, M., Zu Castell, W. & Wehrhan, M. 2007. Mapping clay content across boundaries at the landscape scale with electromagnetic induction. Soil Science Society of America Journal, 71, 1740-1747.
The abstracts and PDFs of these papers are available at www.pedometrics.org/best_paper_2007.asp
Some Special Issues
Ecological indicators at multiple scales, Edited by Giovanni Zurlini and Philippe Girardin. Ecological Indicators, Volume 8, Issue 6, Pages 781-862 (November 2008)
Mercury Cycling and Bioaccumulation in the Environment, Edited by Reed Harris, Karen Kidd and Jamie Shanley Environmental Pollution, Volume 154, Issue 1, Pages 1-154 (July 2008)
Radionuclides in soils, 1960 to 2006: A view from the World Congress of Soil Science, Edited by Edward R. Landa and Shigeo Uchida. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, Volume 99, Issue 6, Pages 873-1010 (June 2008)
Soils and Waste Management: A Challenge to Climate Change, Edited by Claudio Mondini, Miguel A. Sanchez-Monedero, Maria Luz Cayuela and Ed Stentiford
Waste Management, Volume 28, Issue 4, Pages 671-774 (2008)
Modelling Pedogenesis, Edited by S. Cornu, A. Samoulian and J. Phillips. Geoderma, Volume 145, Issues 3-4, Pages 177-504 (15 June 2008)
Antarctic Soils and Soil Forming Processes in a Changing Environment, Edited by James G. Bockheim and Megan Balks. Geoderma, Volume 144, Issues 1-2, Pages 1-414 (15 March 2008)
Fire Effects on Soil Properties, Edited by X. Ubeda and J. Mataix-Solera. Catena, Volume 74, Issue 3, Pages 175-334 (15 August 2008)
Free access to scientific literature
If your library has no subscriptions to your favourite scientific journals then there are various ways to get to the papers:
TEEAL is a project of Cornell University's Albert R. Mann Library in cooperation with over 60 major scientific publishers, societies and index providers. TEEAL contains: 130+ agricultural journals, Full-text articles, 1993-2008 coverage, Index database, Offline tool (no Internet or phone line required). It works on a stand alone PC or network, more info click here.
The AGORA program, set up by FAO together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to a digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA provides a collection of 1278 journals to institutions in 107 countries. AGORA is designed to enhance the scholarship of the many thousands of students, faculty and researchers in agriculture and life sciences in the developing world, more info click here.
Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), an international public-private consortium coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale University, and leading science and technology publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to one of the world's largest collections of environmental science research. Over 1,300 peer reviewed titles owned and published by over 340 publishing houses and scholarly societies are now available in more than 100 low income countries, more info click here.
INASP's Mission is to enable a sustainable network of stakeholders that owns and drives access, use, dissemination and communication of research information. As part of the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERI) publishers and networks of libraries work together to enable access to scholarly information using ICTs within the developing and emerging countries. This project includes: over 20,000 full text online journals, many of the world's leading citation, bibliographic and reference databases, document delivery from over 20,000 research journals, CD-ROM (or DVD) format can be provided where they are available, more info click here.
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