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Soil Health And Remediation For Urban Gardens In Utah, Melissa Chilinski
Soil Health And Remediation For Urban Gardens In Utah, Melissa Chilinski
All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023
Urban environments are at an increased risk of soil contamination and poor soil health due to anthropogenic causes. As healthy farmland is developed, new urban farmers and gardeners are often left growing food on unwanted land with unknown histories of previous use. Varied research and methods for obtaining healthy soils can cause new growers to make decisions that negatively impact soil health and fertility, or on the other hand, conflicting information can cause individuals to become unnecessarily fearful of common soil contaminants and their effect on human health. Common soil contaminants, like trace metals (often referred to as heavy metals) …
Exploring Soil-Tree Interactions After Applying Organic Matter Amendments To Peach Orchards In The Subtropical Climate Of The Southeastern United States, Brian Lawrence
All Dissertations
Soil disturbance from the cultivation and intensive management of orchards in hot and humid subtropical climates can reduce soil organic matter (OM). This research explored how the addition of OM amendments impact soil and tree parameters in two field studies and how proximity to OM may elicit unique genomic response of peach roots in a split-root pot study. The first field study applied two rates of compost (1x and 2x) and subsequently reduced fertilizer applications annually to a virgin and replant orchard location. While both compost rates successfully replaced fertilizers, only the 2x rate in the replant location increased soil …
Biochar Amendment For Enhanced Nitrogen Use, Soil Health, And Plant Growth, Xiuwen Li
Biochar Amendment For Enhanced Nitrogen Use, Soil Health, And Plant Growth, Xiuwen Li
Masters Theses
Biochar is considered as a soil amendment to improve the resilience and productivity of agricultural systems. In particular, co-application of biochar and nitrogen (N) fertilizer has the potential to reduce N losses compared to applying synthetic N alone. However, the positive effects of biochar amendment are tightly linked to several factors. Our overall objective was to determine the effect of biochar types, application methods, and biochar rate on soil health, especially on soil N dynamics, and forage production through bench - and field-scale experiments. A 60-day bench-scale experiment was conducted to study the effect of amending soil with the two …
Going Back To The Soil: An Integrated Approach To Farming., Renée V. Christie
Going Back To The Soil: An Integrated Approach To Farming., Renée V. Christie
Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)
Agricultural productivity is often constrained by nutrient availability; as such, copious amounts of synthetic fertilizers are applied to maintain productivity. However, the intensive use of synthetic fertilizers has reduced the capacity of the soil to carry out crucial roles such as nutrient cycling because of shifts in the microbial community composition and structure. In addition, much of the applied synthetic fertilizers become lost to the environment through run-off, which contributes to soil degradation. With the increasing demand on agricultural systems to provide food and fibre and the adverse impacts of agricultural production on the soil resource, amendments that support soil …
Assessing Kiln-Produced Hardwood Biochar For Improving Soil Health In A Temperate Climate Agricultural Soil, Emily J. Cole
Assessing Kiln-Produced Hardwood Biochar For Improving Soil Health In A Temperate Climate Agricultural Soil, Emily J. Cole
Doctoral Dissertations
Soil quality has become a major factor used in assessing sustainable land management and the overall environmental quality, food security, and economic viability of agricultural lands. Recently, biochar has been touted as having many potential uses as a soil amendment for improving soil quality, specifically improving cation exchange capacity, pH and nutrient availability. However, soil biology also plays a significant role in biogeochemical processes that influence soil health and should be included in a more comprehensive study of soil health. This dissertation describes 4 projects within the same 3-year field study with the cumulative purpose of better understanding the effect …