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Soil Resources
Ban paves the way
Issue Date: Dec 15, 2012
Askew
Issue Date: Aug 31, 2005
The Seeds Bill 2004, which aims to replace the Seeds Act, 1966, is with the Indian Parliament. It is a bone of contention. Between interests of farmers and the private seeds industry. Parliament's standing committee on agriculture is looking into this bill, drawing widespread criticism for favouring the seed industry and compromising the interest of the farmer.
Invasive Alien Species
Issue Date: Feb 29, 2004
70 years ago, a species called the yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) turned up at the Christmas Islands off Australia, perhaps stuck to a piece of timber. For a long time, it remained dormant. Then in the mid 1990s, its population began to explode. Yellow crazy ants began to form super colonies, some as grotesquely large as 700 hectares (ha). The species swarmed the island, colonising -- by 2003 -- 2000 ha of tropical forest.
The cold rush
Issue Date: Jun 30, 2003
Desolate, cold, inhospitable, relegated to the backyards of exploration and knowledge. Antarctica did not emerge from this unfortunate fate till less than 100 years ago, before which, whalers and seafarers were its only visitors. Cartographers barely acknowledged its presence (or chose to ignore it altogether). And the first explorations, which began in early 20th century, remained restricted to the enormous continent's fringes.
Field day
Issue Date: Jan 31, 2003
What is soil? Nothing but simple clod, always taken for granted. But dig deeper, and you will find that this simple clod generates complex equations of survival and wealth, equity and polity. It is a big little ecological variable. Its influences remain hidden from us.
Ground reality
Issue Date: Nov 30, 2011
ANIMALS that live in the soil play an important role in the ecosystem but little is known about their correlation with organisms above the ground. A study of soils from 11 areas around the world shows that unlike most species above the ground, soil animals have restricted distributions.
Blowing in the wind
Issue Date: Aug 15, 2011
OVER the past two decades there has been an increase in the outbreak of dust storms over East Asia. Large quantities of dust particles suspended in the air not only block the amount of sunlight reaching the earth, they also cause respiratory and visual complications.
Fertilizers acidify soils
Issue Date: Apr 30, 2010
SOILS, too, must endure acidity. Each plant and soil life form has a particular soil pH it is used to. Any change can lead to complications in the organism’s metabolism. For example, decrease in pH modifies the top soils—a major source of crop nutrients.
Flooding out arsenic
Issue Date: Jan 15, 2010
For the last two decades the world has been trying to explain how arsenic leaches into groundwater in the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra floodplain. Solutions, however, are very few. An estimated 100 million people are still at risk from contamination.
Soils are breathing faster
Issue Date: May 15, 2010
THE soil-to-air cycle of carbon dioxide or, more precisely, soil respiration is a major source of carbon dioxide emission. The soil is likely to respire even faster in future as temperatures rise due to global warming.
Plants photosynthesize during the day and produce oxygen from carbon dioxide. At night a different metabolic cycle takes place which results in the release of carbon dioxide. This, along with microbial respiration and chemical processes that lead to oxidation of soil minerals are the ways in which the soil respires.
