Soil Types News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

Populations Overheat as Major Cities Fail Canopy Goals

Nov. 19, 2024 — A new study measuring access to nature for eight major global cities found most still have inadequate canopy cover, despite access to an abundance of ...

Building Roots in Glass, a Bio-Inspired Approach to Creating 3D Microvascular Networks Using Plants and Fungi

Nov. 19, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new bio-inspired approach to building complex 3D microfluidic networks by utilizing plant roots and fungal hyphae as molds. The team grew plants and fungi in ...

American Soil Losing More Nutrients for Crops Due to Heavier Rainstorms

Nov. 18, 2024 — Phosphorus, a nutrient in soil essential for sustaining most forms of life, is increasingly disappearing from land as it is washed into waterways throughout the United States, according to a new ...

Bee Alert: Pesticides Pose a Real Threat to Over 70% of Wild Bees

Nov. 18, 2024 — A new study reveals alarming risks that pesticides pose to ground-nesting bees, which are crucial for pollination and food production. As agriculture increasingly relies on pesticides to protect crops, the unintended consequences for these essential ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:15pm EST

Living Microbes Discovered in Earth's Driest Desert

Nov. 14, 2024 — A new technique allows researchers to separate external and internal DNA to identify microbes colonizing the hostile environment of the Atacama ...

Diverse and Diverging Demands on Forests in Germany

Nov. 14, 2024 — Forests provide biodiversity, ecosystem functions, income and much more. How can these diverse and seemingly diverging demands be met? An international research team addressed this question by ...

GPS System for Microorganisms Could Revolutionize Police Work

Nov. 7, 2024 — A research team developed an AI tool that traces back the most recent places you have been to. The tool acts like a satellite navigation system, but instead of guiding you to your hotel, it ...

How Gophers Brought Mount St. Helens Back to Life in One Day

Nov. 6, 2024 — When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, lava incinerated anything living for miles around. As an experiment, scientists dropped gophers onto parts of the scorched mountain for only 24 hours. The ...

Bacteria Work Together to Thrive in Difficult Conditions

Sep. 13, 2024 — In a new study, researchers have determined through both statistical analysis and in experiments that soil pH is a driver of microbial community composition -- but that the need to address toxicity ...

Study Shows Natural Regrowth of Tropical Forests Has Immense Potential to Address Environmental Concerns

Oct. 30, 2024 — A new study finds that up to 215 million hectares of land (an area larger than Mexico) in humid tropical regions around the world has the potential ...

Invasive Plants Drive Homogenization of Soil Microbial Communities Across U.S.

Oct. 28, 2024 — A new study reveals that invasive plants are reshaping soil microbial communities across the U.S., making them more uniform and altering how ...

Plant Diversity Enhances Soil Carbon Retention

Oct. 24, 2024 — A new study shows that increasing plant diversity in agriculture can be used to improve the carbon sequestration potential of agricultural soils. As the agricultural sector strives to reduce its ...

Scientists Discover How Fungi Interact With Soil Actinomycetes

Oct. 22, 2024 — In a recent study, researchers investigated the interactions between Pyricularia oryzae, the rice blast fungus, and the beneficial soil bacterium Streptomyces griseus. They found that P. oryzae ...

Soil's Secret Language: Researchers Decode Plant-to-Fungi Communication

Oct. 17, 2024 — Researchers have cracked the code of plant-to-fungi communication in a new study. Using baker's yeast, the researchers discovered that the plant hormone strigolactone (SL) activates fungal genes and ...

Loss of 'Nitrogen Fixers' Threatens Biodiversity, Ecosystems

Oct. 18, 2024 — New research shows how human activities, like fertilizer use and polluting, are impacting nitrogen-fixing plants which are crucial for maintaining healthy ecosystems by adding nitrogen to the ...

Honey Bees in Demand: New Contract Strategies to Support Pollination Services

Oct. 15, 2024 — As the world's native bee populations are declining, crop production requiring pollinators increasingly relies on commercial pollination services. In the U.S., the beekeeping industry is in ...

Arthropods Dominate Plant Litter Decomposition in Drylands

Oct. 15, 2024 — An analysis of leaf litter breakdown in climatically diverse habitats shows that decomposition by larger invertebrates dominates in hot, dry regions and warmer seasons. Researchers have shown that ...

Changing Watering Practices to Improve Tomato Plant Health

Oct. 14, 2024 — Some people believe that talking to your plants makes them thrive. While there's limited scientific support for sound improving plant health, there's a growing amount of evidence about the ...

Antarctic 'Greening' at Dramatic Rate

Oct. 7, 2024 — Vegetation cover across the Antarctic Peninsula has increased more than tenfold over the last four decades, new research ...

Decades-Long Research Reveals New Understanding of How Climate Change May Impact Caches of Arctic Soil Carbon

Oct. 3, 2024 — Utilizing one of the longest-running ecosystem experiments in the Arctic, researchers have developed a better understanding of the interplay among plants, microbes and soil nutrients -- findings that ...

A Tool to Enhance the Taste and Texture of Sourdough and Study the Complexity of Microbiomes

Oct. 1, 2024 — Researchers explore how acetic acid bacteria shapes emergent properties of sourdough, with implications across complex microbial ...

Different Adaptation Strategies to Saline Soils Identified in Neighboring Populations of the Same Plant Species

Oct. 1, 2024 — Researchers have identified two divergent adaptive responses to soil salinity in populations of the same wild species found in the Catalonia's coastal area, the Brassica fruticulosa, and have ...

Discovery of 3,775-Year-Old Preserved Log Supports 'Wood Vaulting' as a Climate Solution

Sep. 27, 2024 — A new study suggests that an ordinary old log could help refine strategies to tackle climate change. A team of researchers analyzed a 3,775-year-old log and the soil it was excavated from. Their ...

Transforming Agriculture from Carbon Source to Sink

Sep. 23, 2024 — The food system is one of the most significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, making the reduction of emissions in this sector a priority for policymakers around the world. ...

Human Urine Could Be Used as Eco-Friendly Crop Fertilizer

Sep. 23, 2024 — Bacterial communities in soil are as resilient to human urine as synthetic fertilizers -- making recycling the bodily fluid as a fertilizer for agricultural crops a viable ...

Soil Footprint: A Simple Indicator of a Crop's Impact on Soil Erosion

Sep. 17, 2024 — A research team proposes a method to calculate, compare and communicate how different crops affect the loss of agricultural soil, with the aim of raising awareness of this problem and promoting ...

How Plant Communities Change When Conquering Uninhabited Ground

Sep. 17, 2024 — Some plants are able to take over uninhabited spaces like sand dunes, volcanic substrates and rockfall areas. The first colonizers have specific traits that allow them to grow in such hostile ...

How Gaps in the Canopy of a Floodplain Influence Microclimate and Soil Biological Activity

Sep. 16, 2024 — Canopy gaps in a mixed floodplain forest have a direct effect on forest soil temperature and moisture, but only have a minor impact on soil biological ...

The Legacy of Corn Nitrogen Fertilizer: Study Shows Lengthy Impact in Tile Drained Systems

Sep. 12, 2024 — Midwestern soils are among the most productive in the world, thanks in part to extensive tile drainage systems that remove excess water from crop fields. But water isn't the only thing flowing ...

Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture Suggests Even Greater Challenges to the Environment, Global Food Supply and Public Health

Sep. 12, 2024 — A sweeping global research review of the links between climate and agriculture reveals the likelihood of an emergent feedback loop whereby, as climate change puts more pressure on the global food ...

Biogeochemists Make Recommendations for Tackling 'Hidden' Phosphorus

Sep. 11, 2024 — As the world tries to mitigate agriculture's effect on the environment, much of the story can be found in the soils, which stores and cycles nutrient elements of carbon, nitrogen, and ...

Cattle Raised by Maasai Farmers Aren't the Conservation Villains They've Been Made out to Be, Study Finds

Sep. 9, 2024 — A new study has found the pastoral practices of the Indigenous Maasai people of Kenya had almost no discernible positive or negative effect on the ecological well-being of the Maasai Mara National ...

Growing Key Biomethane Crop on Peat Emits 3 Times More CO2 Than Using Natural Gas

Sep. 9, 2024 — There has been a rapid expansion in growing crops such as maize to produce biomethane as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, to help reach Net Zero. But some of this increased cultivation, on ...

Making Baby Food Safer: Arsenic and Cadmium Contamination Levels in Rice

Sep. 5, 2024 — Researchers found that flooded rice fields tend to have higher amounts of arsenic and lower amounts of cadmium while drier rice fields have lower amounts of arsenic and higher amounts of cadmium. The ...