Το work with title Mass distribution, chemical and biochemical properties of soil aggregates in a soil chronosequence by Apostolakis Antonios is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Bibliographic Citation
Antonios Apostolakis, "Mass distribution, chemical and biochemical properties of soil aggregates in a soil chronosequence", Diploma Work, School of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece, 2015
https://doi.org/10.26233/heallink.tuc.37192
This work investigates the effect of land use on soil structure, through the examination of mass distribution among aggregation classes (>2 mm, 2.0-1.0 mm, 1.0-0.250 mm, 0.250-0.053 mm and <0.053 mm) as well as their chemical (TOC, TN, NH4+, NO3-) and biochemical properties (enzymatic activity and microbial respiration). In order to understand the interaction between C sequestration, soil structure and soil fertility in general, 3 different land uses that represent a soil chronosequence, from frequent tilling for 30 years to native vegetation for 6 and 50 years, were studied. Moreover, the CAST model was used to simulate C sequestration in respect with the above mentioned chronosequence. Finally, until now, due to the lack of a common methodology for evaluating the biochemical and biological properties of soil aggregates, the published data exhibit great heterogeneity. For this reason, the two prominent sieving methodologies (wet sieving and dry sieving under optimum soil moisture conditions) were used and assessed.