Methods of soil analysis.

TL;DR: In this paper, using 35,502 on-farm fertilization experiments, the authors demonstrated that smallholders in China could produce more grain with less N fertilizer use through optimizing N application rate.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors used waveguides and tensiometers to obtain in situ measurements of soil moisture in unsaturated soils and applied three scaling methods to improve the performance of these measurements.

TL;DR: In this article, vegetation and soil characteristics were compared among alpine grassland ecosystems in a semi-arid basin on the northeast ridge of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP).

TL;DR: In this article, a composite fingerprinting technique, incorporating uncertainty analysis, has been employed to investigate the mean relative contribution of sediment sources in permanent gullies, where 31 tracers were measured at 62 different sampling sites from three layers of a gully wall [surface layer (SL), sandy soil layer (SSL), and semi-weathering rock layer (SWL)].

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a modeling approach aimed at seasonal resolution of global climatic and edaphic controls on patterns of terrestrial ecosystem production and soil microbial respiration using satellite imagery (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer and International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project solar radiation), along with historical climate (monthly temperature and precipitation) and soil attributes (texture, C and N contents) from global (1°) data sets as model inputs.

TL;DR: In this paper, the Century ecosystem model was applied to a series of forest and grassland sites distributed globally to examine large-scale controls over soil carbon, including soil texture and foliar lignin content.

TL;DR: In this article, the Rothamsted model is used to calculate the amount of CO2 that would be released from the world stock of soil organic matter if temperatures increase as predicted, the annual return of plant debris to the soil being held constant.

TL;DR: In this paper, the formation of soil structure involves the physical forces of shrinking and swelling created by changes in water status of soils, freezing and thawing, tillage, or by movement of the larger biota in soils.