August 12, 2010
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Soil & Groundwater Newsletter August 12, 2010 |
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| This Week´s Featured News Stories |
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Protecting soil in fire-ravaged landscapes
Following a wildfire, there is often the potential for devastating storm-induced erosion and mudslides. To prevent this possibility, teams of scientists work on these scared landscapes to quickly assess the erosion potential and potential mitigation strategies. By using digital soil and fire severity data, coupled with a Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the process is made much simpler. A new GIS tool that helps better protect post-fire landscapes has been developed by Penn State University and the USDA Forest Service. The tool simply extracts the most pertinent soil properties from ... |
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Forest fires help power the nitrogen cycle
When fire burns down a forest, nitrate levels go up, and the effects are persistent, according to recent research from University of Montana scientists. They found that charcoal deposited during fire events has the potential to stimulate the conversion of ammonia to nitrates, an important step in the nitrogen cycle. Led by Patrick Ball, the research team found that a type of bacteria that transforms ammonia into nitrates was found in greater abundance in recently burned sites, despite the fact that the “recent” fire was twelve years prior to the sampling period. In addition ... |
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