Publications related to Soil functions

Consider the Anoxic Microsite: Acknowledging and Appreciating Spatiotemporal Redox Heterogeneity in Soils and Sediments

Reduction-oxidation (redox) reactions underlie essentially all biogeochemical cycles. Like most soil properties and processes, redox is spatiotemporally heterogeneous. However, unlike other soil features, redox heterogeneity has yet to be incorporated into ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

OUR COMMON SOILS: West Lausanne Urbanization as Anthropedogenesis, A Section through the Spaces and Times of Urban Soils

Antoine Vialle

Motivated by ever-increasing soil degradation and artificialization due to past and present urban growth dynamics, the current trend of spatial planning policies at the European and Swiss levels is promoting increased soil protection, by avoiding new devel ...

EPFL2021

Nitrate removal and young stream water fractions at the catchment scale

Paolo Benettin, Li Li

Despite extensive research on nitrate export and removal, nutrient contamination remains a major threat to water bodies worldwide. At the local scale, nitrate removal is governed by biogeochemical conditions that vary in space and time, making integration ...

WILEY2020

Mapping Urbanization as an Anthropedogenetic Process: A Section through the Times of Urban Soils

Antoine Vialle

Current trends of spatial planning policies give a strategic role to soils, the multifunctionality of which must be considered as a crucial driver facing cities’ forthcoming social-ecological transition. However, soils within urban areas are insufficiently ...

2020

Stakeholders’ Perspectives to Support the Integration of Ecosystem Services in Spatial Planning in Switzerland

Jérôme Chenal, Rémi Jaligot

Integrating the concept of ecosystem services (ES) into spatial planning is an opportunity to make land use and management choices that maximize the delivery of multiple ES. The assessment of social demand can be useful for the identification of priority a ...

2019

Composition and superposition of alluvial deposits drive macro-biological soil engineering and organic matter dynamics in floodplains

Claire Guenat, Pascal Turberg, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, Renée-Claire Le Bayon, Andreas Cedric Schomburg

Soil structure formation in alluvial soils is a fundamental process in near-natural floodplains. A stable soil structure is essential for many ecosystem services and helps to prevent river bank erosion. Plants and earthworms are successful soil engineering ...

2019

Current developments in soil ecotoxicology and the need for strengthening soil ecotoxicology in Europe: results of a stakeholder workshop

BackgroundSoil is one of our most important resources and fulfills many ecological functions such as storage and filtration of water and nutrients, transformation of chemical compounds and nutrients, biomass production, and carbon storage. Such soil functi ...

2018

Subordinate plants mitigate drought effects on soil ecosystem processes by stimulating fungi

Alexandre Buttler, Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek

The subordinate insurance hypothesis suggests that highly diverse communities contain greater numbers of subordinate species than less diverse communities. It has previously been reported that subordinate species can improve grassland productivity durin ...

Wiley-Blackwell2015

Analysis of carbon and nitrogen dynamics in riparian soils: Model validation and sensitivity to environmental controls

David Andrew Barry, Alessandro Brovelli, Jordi Batlle-Aguilar, Pascal Niklaus

The Riparian Soil Model (RSM) of Brovelli et al. (Sci. Total Environ., this issue) was applied to study nutrient turnover in a revitalized section of the Thur River, North-East Switzerland. The model was first calibrated on field experimental data. The mod ...

Elsevier2012

Analysis of carbon and nitrogen dynamics in riparian soils: Model development

David Andrew Barry, Alessandro Brovelli, Jordi Batlle-Aguilar

The quality of riparian soils and their ability to buffer contaminant releases to aquifers and streams are connected intimately to moisture content and nutrient dynamics, in particular of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). A multi-compartment model – named the R ...

Elsevier2012

Effects of soil stratigraphy on pore-water flow in a creek-marsh system

David Andrew Barry

In coastal marshes, low-permeability mud is often found overlying high permeability sandy deposits. A recently developed 3D creek-marsh model was used to investigate the effects of soil stratigraphy (a mud layer overlying a sandy-loam layer) on pore-water ...

2012

Uncertainties in determining microbial biomass C using the chloroform fumigation-extraction method

Daniel Scott Alessi

tested the accuracy of the chloroform fumigation-extraction method, which is commonly used to determine soil biomass C concentrations. Accurate and precise determination of total microbial biomass is important in order to characterize soil properties and t ...

2011

Dynamics of atmospheric N deposition in a temperate calcareous forest soil

Claire Guenat, Jean-Claude Védy, Isabelle Morier Jaquet

In temperate forest ecosystems, soil acts as a major sink for atmospheric N deposition. A 15N labeling experiment in a hardwood forest on calcareous fluvisol was performed to study the processes involved. Low amounts of ammonium (15NH4 +) or nitrate (15NO3 ...

2008

Endocrine disruption in soil invertebrates : assessing multigeneration effects of insect growth regulators on "Folsomia Candida" and developing a toxicoproteomic approach

Sophie Campiche

In the past years, it has been observed that some compounds present in our environment can disturb the reproduction and development of animals like fishes, birds, or reptiles by interfering with their endocrine system. Indeed, these endocrine disrupting co ...

EPFL2006