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Articles in the News That Discuss Soil

These news stories, which concern soil and soil-related topics, have been gathered from various sources on the Internet.  The stories are located off of this site. I will keep links on this page for about a month.

• Bring back DDT? Think again. (The Christian Science Monitor - USA; 13 Sep 07)
  [We know it kills birds, fish, and frogs; new research shows it can stunt food crops as well.]
• Pinoy chairs UN scientific body on desertification (American Chronicle - USA; 12 Sep 07)
  [William Dollente Dar, from Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur, has just been elected as Chair of the Committee on Science and Technology (CST) in the current (September 3-14) conference in Madrid, Spain under the auspices of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).]
• Autumn Tips for Healthy Spring Pastures (The Horse - USA; 12 Sep 07)
  [As the University of Kentucky's Horse Pasture Evaluation Program begins to wrap up its third year serving Central Kentucky horse farms, forage experts share some of the horse pasture trends they've seen during the past three years and recommend steps farms should take now to ensure healthy pastures next year.]
• Soil turns paved paradise into urban jungle (ABC Online - Australia; 11 Sep 07)
  [The 'paved paradise' made famous by folk singer Joni Mitchell may soon be sprouting greenery thanks to an engineered soil created by US researchers to combat urban pollution.]
• Genetically Modified Sorghum Resists Aluminum Contamination (Wired - USA; 11 Sep 07)
  [Cornell scientists announced last week that they have isolated and cloned an "aluminum-tolerant" gene in sorghum, a cereal common in arid regions that's used for food as well as Maotai, the Chinese booze.]
• UN body, Food & Agriculture Organisation, comes out in favour of organic farming (Westender - Australia; 11 Sep 07)
  [FAO Report says organic farming fights hunger, tackles climate change, and is good for farmers, consumers and the environment.]
• Strip Cropping as a Way to Increase Cowpea Production (Voice of America - USA; 10 Sep 07)
  [Farmers in northern Nigeria learn a method used in many countries to provide bigger crops and protect soil.]
• Plans to dump PCB-tainted soil in Elliott Bay raise concerns (Seattle Post-Intelligencer - Washington; 10 Sep 07)
  [Environmentalists fear effect of toxic mud on animals and people.]
• High-tech equipment gives Alabama farmers lift (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette - Indiana; 9 Sep 07)
  [Precision agriculture relies on information, technology and management to help farmers distribute the necessary fertilizer and chemicals in the specific areas that need them.]
• IT'S TIME FOR SOME COMMON SENSE ON METHYL BROMIDE (Health News Digest - USA; 9 Sep 07
  [Long renowned as a great friend of the agricultural industry, methyl bromide safeguards crops and protects the soil. And yet, a handful of critics—most of whom do not realize the importance of this agent, nor recognize the severe consequences that will befall the United States if we summarily ban the use of methyl bromide—want this molecule to forever disappear.]
• It’s not dirt, it’s soil (Vail Daily - Colorado; 9 Sep 07)
  [Is it OK to recycle potting soil?]
• The green-manure option (the Ottawa Citizen - Canada; 8 Sep 07)
  [Here's a way to ditch those chemical fertilizers -- for the price of a few pounds of seed.]
• Brown lawn lessons (The Cincinnati Post - Ohio; 8 Sep 07)
  [What to water, feed, seed -- when and why]
• SCC: Soil Conservation Can Save Farmers Money (CKNX Radio - Canada; 7 Sep 07)
  [The Soil Conservation Council of Canada says proving the economic value of soil conservation to farmers is key to protecting this country's soil resources.]
• Rising Population puts strain on Soil (Canada Free Press - Canada; 7 Sep 07)
  [In a climate where everything is going to accelerate global climate-change, Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson has said in a statement "Soil and vegetation are being lost at an alarming rate around the globe, which in turn has devastating effects on food production and accelerates climate change.”]
• Organic agriculture for food security in the tropics (Organic-Market.info - Germany; 7 Sep 07)
  [A Swiss research project is now beginning a long-term study in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Ecological methods of agriculture will be researched based upon their capabilities for food security, alleviation of poverty and protection of the environment in the tropics.]
• Assessing Utilization of Low-input Agriculture Technologies (liats) in Malawi: Adoption and Challeng (PR-GB.com - Bulgaria; 7 Sep 07)
  [The growing interest in sustainable and organic natural resource management and healthy eating, coupled with the increasing number of resource-poor farmers who cannot afford agrichemicals, has led to the potential for organic farming in addressing the issue of sustainable food production and livelihoods of resource-poor people in sub-Saharan Africa.]
• Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB) (National Science Foundation Program Solicitation - USA; 5 Sep 07)
  [Through the LTREB program, the Division of Environmental Biology encourages the submission of proposals aimed at generating extended time series of biological and environmental data that address ecological and evolutionary processes aimed at resolving important issues in environmental biology.]
• Economic Value of Soil Conservation (Discover Moose Jaw - Canada; 5 Sep 07)
  [Proving the economic value of soil conservation to producers is key to protecting Canada's soil resources, say leaders on the front lines of promoting safe soil practices. The challenge is coming up with the numbers to prove that value.]
• Villagers fear losing their shelters to soil erosion in West Bengal district (Daily India - Florida; 5 Sep 07)
  [Residents of several villages alongside the River Ganges in West Bengal's Manik Chak Block are living in constant fear of losing their houses to soil erosion caused by river waters.]
• Iowa Department of Ag to Help Cities Fight Runoff (Wallaces Farmer - Iowa; 5 Sep 07)
  [Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey on August 24 announced that the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship will hire four new conservationists to focus on a new urban conservation program.]
• Japan said late on organic farming uptake (The Japan Times - Japan; 5 Sep 07)
  [Consumer demand for organic food is growing dramatically in Japan and other parts of Asia, according to the Soil Association's recently released global Organic Market Report 2007.]
• Seepage Of Drugs From Hog Farms Not An Environmental Problem, Study Suggests (Science Daily - USA; 3 Sep 07)
  [Environmental activists have long criticized pharmaceutical use by hog farmers and veterinarians in treating swine disease, saying pharmaceuticals are being overused and errantly contaminating the environment. But new research from the University of Guelph has shown that environmental contamination from antibiotics does not pose appreciable risks to soil and aquatic organisms.]
• Madrid Conference Seeks Ways To Stop Desertification (RadioFreeEurope - Czech Republic; 3 Sep 07)
  [More than 2,000 delegates from around the world have gathered in the Spanish capital to discuss ways to stop desertification, or the process that turns arable land into unusable desert.]
• Cambodia's organic farming efforts bear fruit (Reuters - USA; 3 Sep 07)
  [More Cambodian farmers are turning back the clock and using natural fertilizers as a drive to reintroduce organic farming bears fruit.]
• Restored ecosystems can help mitigate climate change (Earth and Sky - USA; 2 Sep 07)
  [The Society for Ecological Restoration International called attention to the need to protect and restore terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in response to a warming climate.]
• Vanishing lakes prove impact of man (Scotsman - United Kingdom; 2 Sep 07)
  [A GENERATION ago it was a vast deep blue sea teeming with life. Now the Aral Sea is sick and green and a fraction of the size it once was.]
• Between Hungry People and Climate Change, Soils Need Help (Environmental News Service - USA; 2 Sep 07)
  [Land degradation and desertification are undercutting the soil's ability to produce more food, causing an environmental crisis that affects one-third of all people on Earth, say experts meeting in Iceland this week to explore solutions.]
• Restoring soils vital to feed world, forestall climate change: experts (RxPG News - USA; 1 Sep 07)
  ["The key principle of land care is that the people at a grassroots level, whose everyday decisions and actions affect the condition of land and water resources, have to be involved in designing and implementing soil conservation measures," says Andrew Campbell, Australia's first National Landcare Facilitator and one of the architects of the landcare program that now involves almost half of all Australian farmers and many other people in rural, urban and coastal communities.]
• Growing Corn Using Precision Agriculture (Science Daily - USA; 1 Sep 07)
  [Scientists at China Agricultural University, the Precision Agriculture Center of University of Minnesota and Mosaic Crop Nutrition have been investigating the potential impact of precision nitrogen management on corn yield, protein content and test weight in a new study.]
• Climate Change and Groundwater Recharge (USDA Agricultural Research Service - USA; 31 Aug 07)
  [Elevated levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere could seriously impact air, weather and vegetation. Now a scientist with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is taking a closer look at what could happen underground.]
• Global food crisis looms as climate change and population growth strip fertile land (The Guardian Unlimited - UK; 31 Aug 07)
  [Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned yesterday.]
• The 5 Ws of corn production (EurekAlert! - USA; 31 Aug 07)
  [The 'who' is farmers, and they're asking where to plant, what hybrid, when to apply nitrogen and why.]
• US: It′s worth the trouble to grow organic (FreshPlaza - Netherlands; 31 Aug 07)
  [Soil rules in any garden, but especially when you grow organic. Simply put, healthy soil will produce healthy plants — and healthy plants will naturally fight off aphids, beetles and other destructive pests.]
• ENVIRONMENT: Dirt Isn't So Cheap After All (Inter Press Service - Italy; 30 Aug 07)
  [Soil erosion is the "silent global crisis" that is undermining food production and water availability, as well as being responsible for 30 percent of the greenhouse gases driving climate change.]
• Global warming risks incorrect says report (TVNZ - New Zealand; 30 Aug 07)
  [Current predictions for global warming underestimate the risk of floods and overestimate the impact of droughts by not taking into account the role plants play in absorbing carbon dioxide, researchers said on Thursday.]
• Dear Science: Can You Make a Venus Flytrap Go Vegan? (The Stranger - Washington; 29 Aug 07)
  [Carnivorous plants get away from the crowd by growing in soil too crappy for other plants and instead grab the iron, calcium, phosphates, and nitrogen they need from living insects.]
• Volcanoes Key To Earth's Oxygen Atmosphere (Science Daily - USA; 29 Aug 07)
  ["The absence of oxidized soil profiles and red beds indicates that oxidative weathering rates were negligible during the Archaean," the researchers report in the Aug. 30 issue of Nature.]
• County farmers doing their part to keep Chesapeake Bay healthy (Lancaster Online - Pennsylvania; 29 Aug 07)
  [The Octoraro Watershed Association is lessening manure runoff one farm at a time.]
• Farm plans put into action (Northumberland Today - Canada; 28 Aug 07)
  [Ontario farm families are learning more about how their farms impact the environment through a voluntary assessment program called the Environmental Farm Plan.]
• Purdue launches CAFO Web site (Science Daily - 28 Aug 07)
  [Purdue University has launched a Web site featuring scientific information about concentrated animal feeding operations.]
• ScienceSouth offers programs preview to Pee Dee students (South Carolina Now - South Carolina; 28 Aug 07)
  [During the preview showcase, students were able to participate in the “Soil Sleuths” and “Micro-Aquaria: Life in Drops of Water” workshops. Kindergarten through eighth-grade students were able to feel for soil as they explored its properties during the soil workshop. Using soil samples, the students had to determine its color, texture and shape.]
• Crop Engineered To Grow In Poisonous Soil (Science Daily - USA; 27 Aug 07)
  [When soils are too acidic, aluminum that is locked up in clay minerals dissolves into the soil as toxic, electrically charged particles called ions, making it hard for most plants to grow.]
• Something Old, Something New: Corn Stover (Southwest News-Herald - Illinois; 27 Aug 07)
  [If left to decay, stover can do a lot of good by building up soil organic matter and reducing the erosion that can occur when bare soil is exposed to wind and rain.]
• Possible Mechanisms Leading to a Delay in Carbon Stock Recovery after Land Use Change (Soil Science Society of America Journal - USA; 27 Aug 07)
  [In this study, researchers sought to determine the signature of newly input C in the soil profile after land use change.]
• Cover Crop Basics (Organic Gardening - USA; 27 Aug 07)
  [Plant "green manure" this fall, and your garden will be more productive and healthier next season.]
• Underground Research into Climate Change (Associated Content - USA; 27 Aug 07)
  [Climate change is not only happening in the world we can see, but it is also happening in the world we cannot see, in places like the soil, subsurface waters and ground waters.]
• NASA Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition Field Report (AMASE 2007): Getting Down to Business (SpaceRef.com - USA; 26 Aug 07)
  [Today was a wonderful day conducting the first rover field test on the Redbeds.]
• Scientists advise using "green" fertilizers to curb environmental pollution (Indian Muslims - California; 26 Aug 07)
  [Chinese scientists are encouraging farmers to use controlled release compound fertilizers to curb nutrients runoff and protect the environment in the wake of major algae bloom outbreaks believed mainly to be caused by run-off from heavy fertiliser use.]
• Study: Martian Soil Has Signs of Life (Slashdot - USA; 25 Aug 07)
  ["Reuters is reporting that a scientist from Germany believes Viking probe data shows signs of life.]
• Ready to Make a Deposit in the Carbon Bank? (Discover Moose Jaw - Canada; 25 Aug 07)
  [Global warming and greenhouse gases might be complex, but this is simple. Pasture land can be an important method to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.]
• Preparing Australian Agriculture for Rising Energy Costs and Water Insecurity (Groovy Green - New York; 24 Aug 07)
  [Conventional agriculture has evolved to the assumption that oil and gas will always be cheap. Large amounts of energy are used in food production making agriculture the third largest energy consuming sector globally.]
• DEVELOPMENT: Farewell to "Flush and Forget" (IPS - Italy; 24 Aug 07)
  [In urban settings, the one-time use of water to disperse human and industrial wastes is becoming an outmoded practice, made obsolete by new technologies and water shortages.]
• Caring for the soul of the soil (Summit Daily News - Colorado; 23 Aug 07)
  [According to Frisco Wine Merchant owner, Susanne Johnston, vineyards that are given the care of sustainable agricultural practices yield a better product.]
• Are scientists overestimating -- or underestimating -- climate change? Part II (Grist Magazine - USA; 23 Aug 07)
  [My previous post debunked an article that argued scientists have seriously overestimated climate change. Now let's look at the evidence for a serious underestimation of climate change.]
• Calculating the Biomass of Martian Soil (Mars Today - USA; 23 Aug 07)
  [A new interpretation of data from NASA's Viking landers indicates that 0.1% of the Martian soil tested could have a biological origin.]
• Eighty attend hearing on proposed FSA closure (Press and Sun-Bulletin - New York; 22 Aug 07)
  [The "one-stop shop" for farmers seeking governmental aid may soon come to an end if the U.S. Department of Agriculture decides to close Broome County's Farm Service Agency office.]
• Outdoors: CWD experts address first meeting of advisory committee (The Capital Times - Wisconsin; 22 Aug 07)
  [Joel Pedersen, associate professor of Soil Science at UW-Madison, emphasized that if abnormal prions get into the environment they will not go away rapidly. He noted a study of scrapie in Iceland where a new flock of sheep came down with scrapie 16 years after the diseased original flock was eliminated.]
• Researchers seek new answers for weed control (Siskiyou Daily News - California; 21 Aug 07)
  [Growers who seek to reduce the number of tractor passes are very limited in their use of cultivation to manage weeds. And there are no known weed control materials available to organic growers that are both effective and economical.]
• E-Science Points To Pollution Solutions (Science Daily - USA; 21 Aug 07)
  [Results from a UK e-Science project are helping to solve two pressing environmental problems. One finding could help to avoid arsenic contamination of drinking water extracted from man-made wells. Another could lead to improved methods of removing the now-banned industrial chemical, dioxin, from soil.]
• Telltale Isotopes in Marijuana Are Nature’s Tracking Devices (The New York Times - New York; 21 Aug 07)
  [With financing from the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Dr. West, 34, is creating a model that can identify the geographic origin of cannabis plants based on certain chemical calling cards. The agency hopes to use the research to help decide where to concentrate its resources.]
• Key to Survival: Healthy Soil (Southwest News-Herald - Illinois; 20 Aug 07)
  [That's why the scientists of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have been putting a lot of thought and effort into long-term studies of soil health: what benefits the soil, what works best, and how long those improvements take.]
• Energy Agriculture - Carbon Farming (Cattle Network - USA; 20 Aug 07)
  [During the past year, scientific evidence has been piling up supporting the concerns about global warming. Melting glaciers, rising ocean levels and volatile weather are all signs of things to come. In response to this evidence, the focus in coming years will be on ways of slowing or actually reversing this trend.]
• SCIENCE MATTERS: Warming may change the nature of the food we eat (LondonTopic.ca - Canada; 19 Aug 07)
  [But global warming and the need to move toward more sustainable ways of food production could gradually change what we eat and how we get it.]
• Dishing dirt on top soil (The News and Observer - North Carolina; 19 Aug 07)
  [I recognized myself immediately in "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations" by David R. Montgomery, a book every suburban gardener -- and every thoughtful eater -- should read.]
• Permafrost collapse affects 'peatland' ecosystem (DailyIndia.com - USA; 19 Aug 07)
  [Permafrost serves as a platform underneath vast expanses of northern forests and wetlands in many northern ecosystems. But rising atmospheric temperatures are accelerating rates of permafrost thaw in northern regions.]
• Book Review: Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization by David R. Montgomery (Blogcritics Magazine - USA; 19 Aug 07)
  [But I did pick up a sense that Australia was not so much farming as mining its soils: rising salinity along the breadbasket Murray-Darling basin as ancient salts were brought to the surface by irrigation water; erosion from the impact of the hard-hoofed cattle and sheep brought with white settlement; desert winds sweeping away marginal lands being ploughed up for wheat.]
• Freshwater supplies threatened in central Pacific (RxPG News - USA; 19 Aug 07)
  [Population growth due to natural increases, inward migration and urbanization mean that fresh groundwater sources are reaching their limit of sustainable supply in urban South Tarawa in Kiribati.]
• Revealing the secrets of the soil (The Observer - UK; 19 Aug 07)
  [Few things send non-wine buffs scuttling for cover as fast as the use of jargon. But how do you explain minerality without clearing the room?]
• Farm planner has faith that state's system works (Auburn Citizen - New York; 18 Aug 07)
  [By What's in a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, or CAFO? Certified Agricultural and Environmental Management planner Brian Boerman of Agricultural Consulting Services, Rochester, recently answered some questions by e-mail.]
• Gold Obtained From A Decayed Stump (Science Daily - USA; 18 Aug 07)
  [Specialists of several institutes of Ulan-Ude, Irkutsk and Novosibirsk have found out that biogeochemical anomalies in complex ore deposit regions were formed by microbes and trees.]
• Forests beat biofuels as warming solution: report (National Post - Canada; 16 Aug 07)
  [Restoring and protecting forests would do far more to reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere than dedicating vast tracts of land to "energy crops," a new report says.]
• New Tahoe Report Shows Warming, Has Clarity Results (YubaNet.com - California; 15 Aug 07)
  [This "Tahoe: State of the Lake Report 2007" presents, in easy-to-read charts, a summary of tens of thousands of scientific observations of lake weather, water conditions, and aquatic life made since the late 1960s by UC Davis scientists. In addition, some data on weather conditions go as far back as 1911.]
• Sudden Oak Death: Humans Fostering Forest-destroying Disease (Science Daily - USA; 15 Aug 07)
  [Caused by an (apparently) non-native water mold (Phytophthora ramorum), the disease affects a broad range of woody plants, and is particularly lethal to our native oaks.]
• Dirt under our feet is anything but cheap (Seattle Post-Intelligencer - Washington; 15 Aug 07)
  [If you want a natural calamity to fret about -- one that is real, and one that humans definitely can trigger and halt -- look not at what's above your head but what's under your shoes.]
• Organic tomatoes are healthier: US study (ABC Online - Australia; 14 Aug 07)
  [The 10-year study, published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, showed flavonoid levels were up to 97 per cent higher when tomatoes were grown in organic soils and fertiliser applications were reduced.]
• Harkin: Soil-saving program safe (Des Moines Register - Iowa; 14 Aug 07)
  [U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Monday at the Iowa State Fair that the Conservation Security Program will be part of the 2007 farm bill, "or there won't be a bill."]
• Climatic Change and Herbicide Technology - Part 3 (Farms.com - Canada; 14 Aug 07)
  [In this third and final segment on climatic change, Dr. Ozair Chaudhry, a biology and environmental science instructor at the Albert Campbell Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Ontario, covers the effect of temperature and drought on herbicides.]
• The good soil (The Nelson Mail - New Zealand; 14 Aug 07)
  [What's happening below your grass? Anne Hardie talks with a retired farmer who says we've strayed too far from nature and it's affecting not only the grass and animals, but human health as well.]
• Soil erosion eating away at coast (The Times - South Africa; 14 Aug 07)
  [Soil erosion has reached crisis levels along the KwaZulu-Natal coast, prompting the province’s MEC for agriculture and environmental affairs to call on all provincial departments to make a concerted effort deal with it.]
• Explosive Discovery On Genetically Engineered Tobacco Plant (Science Daily - USA; 13 Aug 07)
  [Tobacco may be bad for human health, but a new study reports that a genetically engineered tobacco plant may be very good for the environment. It shows promise for cleaning up soil contaminated with TNT, a widely used military explosive.]
• Pollution Causes 40 Percent Of Deaths Worldwide, Study Finds (Science Daily - USA; 13 Aug 07)
  [Environmental degradation, coupled with the growth in world population, are major causes behind the rapid increase in human diseases, which the World Health Organization has recently reported.]
• Peak phosphorus (Energy Bulletin - USA; 13 Aug 07)
  [In this paper, Patrick Déry applies Hubbert's methods to a very special non-renewable resource - phosphorus - a nutrient essential for agriculture. In the literature, estimates before we "run out" of phosphorus range from 50 to 130 years.]
• Study: Conventional plowing may be bad (Science Daily - USA; 13 Aug 07)
  [A U.S. study suggests traditional plow-based agriculture and the need to feed a rapidly growing world population are depleting the Earth's soil supply.]

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