Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2022
Abstract
Reusing soil can reduce environmental impacts associated with obtaining natural fresh soil during road construction and analogous activities. However, the movement and reuse of soils can spread numerous plant diseases and pests, including propagules of weeds and invasive alien plant species. To avoid the spread of barnyardgrass in reused soil, its seeds must be killed before that soil is spread to new areas. We investigated the possibility of thermal control of barnyardgrass seeds using a prototype of a stationary soil steaming device. One Polish and four Norwegian seed populations were examined for thermal sensitivity. To mimic a natural range in seed moisture content, dried seeds were moistened for 0, 12, 24, or 48 h before steaming. To find effective soil temperatures and whether exposure duration is important, we tested target soil temperatures in the range 60 to 99 C at an exposure duration of 90 s (Experiment 1) and exposure durations of 30, 90, or 180 s with a target temperature of 99 C (Experiment 2). In a third experiment, we tested exposure durations of 90, 180, and 540 s at 99 C (Experiment 3). Obtaining target temperatures was challenging. For target temperatures of 60, 70, 80, and 99 C, the actual temperatures obtained were 59 to 69, 74 to 76, 77 to 83, and 94 to 99 C, respectively. After steaming treatments, seed germination was followed for 28 d in a greenhouse. Maximum soil temperature affected seed germination, but exposure duration did not. Seed premoistening was of influence but varied among temperatures and populations. The relationships between maximum soil temperature and seed germination were described by a common dose–response function. Seed germination was reduced by 50% when the maximum soil temperature reached 62 to 68 C and 90% at 76 to 86 C. For total weed control, 94 C was required in four populations, whereas 79 C was sufficient in one Norwegian population.
Abstract
Established invasive alien plant species make it difficult and costly to move and make use of infested soil in public and private construction work. Stationary soil steaming as a non-chemical control method has the potential to disinfect soil masses contaminated with seeds and other propagative plant materials. The outcome can vary depending on steaming temperature and duration. Higher temperatures and longer durations are relatively more efficient but may also have side-effects including change in soil physical and chemical characteristics. Barnyard grass (Echinochloa crus-galli) is among troublesome invasive species in Norway. We have tested different steam duration at 99°C to find the possible lowest effective exposure duration for killing seeds of this annual grass species. Four replications of 40 barnyard grass dry seeds of one population were placed in polypropylene-fleece bags (9*7 cm), moistened for 12 hours, and covered by the soil at a depth of 7 cm in 60*40*20 cm boxes. The boxes with soil and bags were steamed at 99°C for 1.5, 3 and 9 min. The bags including steamed seeds were taken out, opened, placed on soil surface in pots and covered by a thin layer of soil. The pots were placed in greenhouse and watered from below and seed germination was followed for a month. Moistened non-steamed seeds were used as control. It was shown that steaming at 99°C gave 0% germination indicating that 100% of the seeds were killed regardless of exposure duration while in the control seed germination was 100%. Consequently, to achieve an efficacy of 100%, exposure duration of 1.5 min would be enough. Finding the lowest possible steam temperature and exposure duration to get the highest possible seed killing in a seed mixture of different plant species as well as other factors to increase the heat transferability are under investigation. Keywords: Echinochloa crus-galli; Resource recovery; Steaming temperature and duration; Thermal soil disinfection
Authors
Cornelya KlutschAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Rudi Hessel Guido Wyseure Ioanna S. Panagea Abdallah Alaoui Mark S. Reed Hedwig van Delden Melanie Muro Jane Mills Oene Oenema Francisco Areal Erik van den Elsen Simone Verzandvoort Falentijn Assinck Annemie Elsen Jerzy Lipiec Aristeidis Koutroulis Lilian O'Sullivan Martin A. Bolinder Luuk Fleskens Ellen Kandeler Luca Montanarella Marius Heinen Zoltán Tóth Moritz Hallama Julian Cuevas Jantiene E. M. Baartman Ilaria Piccoli Tommy Dalgaard Jannes Stolte Jasmine E. Black Charlotte-Anne ChiversAbstract
Soils form the basis for agricultural production and other ecosystem services, and soil management should aim at improving their quality and resilience. Within the SoilCare project, the concept of soil-improving cropping systems (SICS) was developed as a holistic approach to facilitate the adoption of soil management that is sustainable and profitable. SICS selected with stakeholders were monitored and evaluated for environmental, sociocultural, and economic effects to determine profitability and sustainability. Monitoring results were upscaled to European level using modelling and Europe-wide data, and a mapping tool was developed to assist in selection of appropriate SICS across Europe. Furthermore, biophysical, sociocultural, economic, and policy reasons for (non)adoption were studied. Results at the plot/farm scale showed a small positive impact of SICS on environment and soil, no effect on sustainability, and small negative impacts on economic and sociocultural dimensions. Modelling showed that different SICS had different impacts across Europe—indicating the importance of understanding local dynamics in Europe-wide assessments. Work on adoption of SICS confirmed the role economic considerations play in the uptake of SICS, but also highlighted social factors such as trust. The project’s results underlined the need for policies that support and enable a transition to more sustainable agricultural practices in a coherent way.
Authors
Daniel Liptzin Jens Boy John L. Campbell Nicholas Clarke Jean-Paul Laclau Roberto Godoy Sherri L. Johnson Klaus Kaiser Gene E. Likens Gunilla Pihl Karlsson Daniel Markewitz Michela Rogora Stephen D. Sebestyen James B. Shanley Elena Vanguelova Arne Verstraeten Wolfgang Wilcke Fred Worrall William H. McDowellAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Abdelhameed Elameen Denis Tourvieille de Labrouhe Emmanuelle Bret-Mestries Francois DelmotteAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Markus A. K. Sydenham Joseph Chipperfield Yoko L. Dupont Katrine Eldegard Stein Joar Hegland Henning Bang Madsen Anders Nielsen Jens M* Olesen Claus Rasmussen Trond Reitan Graciela Rusch Astrid Brekke Skrindo Zander VenterAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Vilde Lytskjold Haukenes Lisa Åsgård Johan Asplund Line Nybakken Jørund Rolstad Ken Olaf Storaunet Mikael OhlsonAbstract
Knowledge about the spatial variation of boreal forest soil carbon (C) stocks is limited, but crucial for establishing management practices that prevent losses of soil C. Here, we quantified the surface soil C stocks across small spatial scales, and aim to contribute to an improved understanding of the drivers involved in boreal forest soil C accumulation. Our study is based on C analyses of 192 soil cores, positioned and recorded systematically within a forest area of 11 ha. The study area is a south-central Norwegian boreal forest landscape, where the fire history for the past 650 years has been reconstructed. Soil C stocks ranged from 1.3 to 96.7 kg m−2 and were related to fire frequency, ecosystem productivity, vegetation attributes, and hydro-topography. Soil C stocks increased with soil nitrogen concentration, soil water content, Sphagnum- and litter-dominated forest floor vegetation, and proportion of silt in the mineral soil, and decreased with fire frequency in site 1, feathermoss- and lichen-dominated forest floor vegetation and increasing slope. Our results emphasize that boreal forest surface soil C stocks are highly variable in size across fine spatial scales, shaped by an interplay between historical forest fires, ecosystem productivity, forest floor vegetation, and hydro-topography.
Authors
Marian Schönauer Robert Prinz Kari Väätäinen Rasmus Astrup Dariusz Pszenny Harri Lindeman Dirk JaegerAbstract
Milder winters and extended wetter periods in spring and autumn limit the amount of time available for carrying out ground-based forest operations on soils with satisfactory bearing capacity. Thus, damage to soil in form of compaction and displacement is reported to be becoming more widespread. The prediction of trafficability has become one of the most central issues in planning of mechanized harvesting operations. The work presented looks at methods to model field measured spatio-temporal variations of soil moisture content (SMC, [%vol]) – a crucial factor for soil strength and thus trafficability. We incorporated large-scaled maps of soil characteristics, high-resolution topographic information – depth-to-water (DTW) and topographic wetness index – and openly available temporal soil moisture retrievals provided by the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive mission. Time-series measurements of SMC were captured at six study sites across Europe. These data were then used to develop linear models, a generalized additive model, and the machine learning algorithms Random Forest (RF) and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGB). The models were trained on a randomly selected 10% subset of the dataset. Predictions of SMC made with RF and XGB attained the highest R2 values of 0.49 and 0.51, respectively, calculated on the remaining 90% test set. This corresponds to a major increase in predictive performance, compared to basic DTW maps (R2 = 0.022). Accordingly, the quality for predicting wet soils was increased by 49% when XGB was applied (Matthews correlation coefficient = 0.45). We demonstrated how open access data can be used to clearly improve the prediction of SMC and enable adequate trafficability mappings with high spatial and temporal resolution. Spatio-temporal modelling could contribute to sustainable forest management.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered