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The term natural cycling appears in a 1968 paper on the transportation of leaf litter and its chemical elements for consideration in fisheries management: "Fluvial transport of tree litter from drainage basins is a factor in natural cycling of chemical elements and in the degradation of the land."
Soil quality reflects how well a soil performs the functions of maintaining biodiversity and productivity, partitioning water and solute flow, filtering and buffering, nutrient cycling, and providing support for plants and other structures. Soil management has a major impact on soil quality. Soil quality relates to soil functions. Unlike water ...
The benefits of SOM result from several complex, interactive, edaphic factors; a non-exhaustive list of these benefits to soil function includes improvement of soil structure, aggregation, water retention, soil biodiversity, absorption and retention of pollutants, buffering capacity, and the cycling and storage of plant nutrients.
A soil clod, however, is not a ped but rather a mass of soil that results from mechanical disturbance of the soil such as cultivation. Soil structure affects aeration, water movement, conduction of heat, plant root growth and resistance to erosion. [26] Water, in turn, has a strong effect on soil structure, directly via the dissolution and ...
In general, organic matter contacting soil has too little nitrogen to support the biosynthetic needs of the decomposing soil microbial population. If the C:N ratio of the decomposing organic matter is above circa 30:1 then the decomposing microbes may absorb nitrogen in mineral form as, e. g., ammonium or nitrates. This mineral nitrogen is said ...
Soil microbial communities experience shifts in the diversity and composition during dehydration and rehydration cycles. [5] Soil moisture affects carbon cycling a phenomenon known as Birch effect. [6] [7] Temperature variations in soil are influenced by factors such as seasonality, environmental conditions, vegetation, and soil composition.
Microorganisms have the ability to carry out wide ranges of metabolic processes essential for the cycling of nutrients and chemicals throughout global ecosystems. Without microorganisms many of these processes would not occur, with significant impact on the functioning of land and ocean ecosystems and the planet's biogeochemical cycles as a whole.
In raised beds, the practice "imitates natural nutrient cycling found in wood decomposition and the high water-holding capacities of organic detritus, while also improving bed structure and drainage properties." This is done by placing wood material (e.g. logs and sticks) in the bottom of the bed before piling organic soil and compost on top.