From the lava plains of the Alvord Desert to the fertile alluvium of the Willamette Valley, Oregon’s secret wealth is lying all around us. It’s an ingredient forged from stars, fire and ice and, ...

Figure 9: Examples of Mollisols (grassland soils) formed from loess. Both soils have mean annual precipitation of 450 mm. The Ustoll (a) has an ustic soil moisture regime and the Xeroll (b) has a ...

Rapid erosion due to human activity, such as grazing livestock and farming, has stripped the Alps of almost all the soil formed since the retreat of the glaciers. This soil developed over millennia as ...

Soils that formed on Earth’s surface thousands of years ago and that are now deeply buried features of vanished landscapes have been found to be rich in carbon, adding a new dimension to our planet’s ...

In certain trees, soils can form along branches and can support varied plant and animal life. However, what conditions these ‘canopy soils’ form in, and what kind of biodiversity they support, has ...

Scientists know iron oxide minerals store large amounts of carbon in soils, but lack a detailed, quantitative understanding of the specific chemical mechanisms that allow them to bind such a wide ...