Showing items 13201 - 13220 of 17057

Soil organic carbon in rehabilitated coal mine soils as an indicator for soil health

- Baumgartl, Thomas, Chan, J., Bucka, F., Pihlap, E.

  • Authors: Baumgartl, Thomas , Chan, J. , Bucka, F. , Pihlap, E.
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: 14th International Conference on Mine Closure, Mine Closure 2021 Vol. 2021-August
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  • Description: Rehabilitation intends to provide a safe, stable and sustainable environment. Soil health is often used as a parameter, which describes the success of reclamation, the performance of the soil and its associated soil system functions. Reclaimed and therefore young soils are in general deprived of soil organic carbon. They are not in equilibrium with their environment and undergo changes over time, faster than natural and developed soils. Carbon content as a summarising criterion for soil health status can be used as an indicator as it reflects the performance of important soil processes, like water holding capacity, drainage and aeration potential and nutrient supply and storage. It is well established that carbon content affects soil functions like hydraulic conductivity by creating structural elements through aggregation processes. Increasing carbon content leads to increased water infiltration, reduced surface runoff and erosional risks, and increases the exchange rate of gases and improves aeration and has in general positive consequences for microbiological activity. Results from a study of soil covers of different ages emphasise this consequence. The evaluation of the rehabilitation success in coal mining using carbon content is complicated due to the difficulty distinguishing between carbon forms: Organic carbon naturally formed by decomposition vs. carbon originating from coal as coal dust or charred material. Furthermore, the assessment of the performance of rehabilitated soils is strongly affected by climatic conditions, which affect the production, decomposition and translocation of organic matter. Litter and dead organic matter from plants are decomposed on the soil surface and incorporated through organisms into the soil profile. Dissolvable organic constituents may be transported with infiltrating water down the profile. Consequently, carbon is primarily concentrated close to the surface. In semi-arid environments the accumulation depth may only be centimetres as was found from a study on the performance of the carbon pool of rehabilitated soils across sites up to 35 years of age. This has implications for the sampling strategy and the assessment of the performance of soils over time. As the carbon content in soils at coal mines can be affected by precipitation and incorporation of coal dust into the soil, the content of new organic carbon representing soil health status can be misleadingly interpreted. Therefore, separation of carbon fractions is necessary to identify the "green" carbon pool (carbon originating from plant litter and residue) as best as possible and extract the correct fraction to assess the performance of soil development. A method has been developed and is presented which allows the separation between the various carbon pools. From the presented study, the following conclusions were drawn: 1) Soil carbon is an easy to measure indicator for the assessment of the performance of soil health of rehabilitated soils; 2) soil functional properties are affected by carbon content and age and hence change with soil development; 3) only green carbon represents soil health and appropriate methodology has to be in place to exclude other carbon pools; 4) carbon storage in rehabilitated soils of semi-arid environments of Australia is below that of natural soils. © 2021, Qualified Mining Consultants LLC,.All right reserved.

Soil organic matter estimation in precision agriculture using wireless sensor networks

- Nguuyen, Linh, Kodagoda, Sarath

  • Authors: Nguuyen, Linh , Kodagoda, Sarath
  • Date: 2017
  • Type: Text , Conference proceedings
  • Relation: 2016 14th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV); Phuket, Thailand; 13-15th November, 2016 p. 277-282
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  • Description: In order to achieve the ever increasing quantity and quality demands for agricultural products, technological innovations must be explored. In most cases, low cost and high quality sensing options are a top priority. This paper addresses the problem of predicting soil organic matter content in an agriculture field using information collected by a low-cost network of mobile, wireless and noisy sensors that can take discrete measurements in the environment. In this context, it is proposed that the spatial phenomenon of organic matter in soil to be monitored is modeled using Gaussian processes. The proposed model then enables the wireless sensor network to estimate the soil organic matter field at all unobserved locations of interest. The estimated values at predicted locations are highly comparable to those at corresponding points on a realistic image that is aerially taken by a very expensive and complex remote sensing system.

Soil reconstruction after mining fails to restore soil function in an Australian arid woodland

- Duncan, Corrine, Good, Megan, Sluiter, Ian, Cook, Simon, Schultz, Nick

  • Authors: Duncan, Corrine , Good, Megan , Sluiter, Ian , Cook, Simon , Schultz, Nick
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Restoration Ecology Vol. 28, no. S1 (2020), p. A35-A43
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  • Description: The biogeochemical properties of soils drive ecosystem function and vegetation dynamics, and hence soil restoration after mining should aim to reinstate the soil properties and hydrological dynamics of remnant ecosystems. The aim of this study is to assess soil structure in two vegetation types in an arid ecosystem, and to understand how these soil properties compare to a reconstructed soil profile after mining. In an arid ecosystem in southeast Australia, soil samples were collected at five depths (to 105 cm) from remnant woodland and shrubland sites, and sites either disturbed or totally reconstructed after mining. We assessed soil physico-chemical properties and microbial activity. Soils in the remnant arid ecosystem had coarse-textured topsoils that overlay clay horizons, which allows water to infiltrate and avoid evaporation, but also slows drainage to deeper horizons. Conversely, reconstructed soils had high sand content at subsoil horizons and high bulk density and compaction at surface layers (0–20 cm). Reconstructed soils had topsoils with higher pH and electrical conductivity. The reconstructed soils did not show increased microbial activity with time since restoration. Overall, the reconstructed soil horizons were not organized in a way that allowed rainfall infiltration and water storage, as is imperative to arid-zone ecosystem function. Future restoration efforts in arid ecosystems should focus on increasing sand content of soils near the surface, to reduce evaporative water loss and improve soil quality and plant health. © 2020 Society for Ecological Restoration

Soil seed bank dynamics of pastures invaded by navua sedge (cyperus aromaticus) in tropical north Queensland

- Chadha, Aakansha, Osunkoya, Olusegun, Shi, Boyang, Florentine, Singarayer, Dhileepan, Kunjithapatham

  • Authors: Chadha, Aakansha , Osunkoya, Olusegun , Shi, Boyang , Florentine, Singarayer , Dhileepan, Kunjithapatham
  • Date: 2022
  • Type: Journal article
  • Relation: Frontiers in agronomy Vol. 4, no. (2022), p.
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  • Description: Navua sedge (Cyperus aromaticus) is threatening crops, pasture species and natural ecosystems in Pacific Island countries and northern Queensland, Australia. To aid future management efforts of this exotic invasive weed, research was conducted to understand the soil seed bank dynamics of pastures invaded by Navua sedge. Six grazing properties were chosen across two landscapes, coastal and inland/upland, with areas that had Navua sedge infestations in Queensland, Australia. At each site, soil was collected from two soil depths, 0-5 and 5-10 cm, and from plots with high and low infestation levels of Navua sedge. It was observed that the soil seed bank dynamics varied significantly between these study sites. Navua sedge was the dominant species in the soil seed bank at all the sites contributing between 62% to 95% of the total seed bank, while pasture seeds occupied only 3% to 24%. Broadleaf seeds were even lower in abundance, showing between 2% to 13% of the total seed count. The abundance of Navua sedge seed present in the soil was significantly correlated with the aboveground biomass of Navua sedge (r=0.53, p=0.006), but no correlation was found with the infestation age of Navua sedge. Based on this work, it is clear that the seed bank of Navua sedge is very large and concentrated within the top 0-5 cm of the soil, with, 83% of total Navua sedge seeds being in this layer. It was also noted that, although, high infestation plots had significantly higher number of seeds than low infestation plots, more than 18,000 Navua sedge seeds/m 2 were still found in the 0-5 cm soil layer of plots regarded as low infestation. We suggest that insights achieved from our soil seed bank study may be used to devise management strategies to minimise the impact of Navua sedge weed in critical grazing and agricultural areas.

Soil–water dynamics investigation at agricultural hillslope with high-precision weighing lysimeters and soil–water collection systems

- Krevh, Vedran, Groh, Jannis, Filipović, Lana, Gerke, Horst, Defterdarović, Jasmina, Thompson, Sally, Sraka, Mario, Bogunović, Igor, Kovač, Zoran, Robinson, Nathan, Baumgartl, Thomas, Filipović, Vilim

  • Authors: Krevh, Vedran , Groh, Jannis , Filipović, Lana , Gerke, Horst , Defterdarović, Jasmina , Thompson, Sally , Sraka, Mario , Bogunović, Igor , Kovač, Zoran , Robinson, Nathan , Baumgartl, Thomas , Filipović, Vilim
  • Date: 2023
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Water (Switzerland) Vol. 15, no. 13 (2023), p.
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  • Description: A quantitative understanding of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) and soil–water dynamics in a hillslope agroecosystem is vital for sustainable water resource management and soil conservation; however, the complexity of processes and conditions involving lateral subsurface flow (LSF) can be a limiting factor in the full comprehension of hillslope soil–water dynamics. The research was carried out at SUPREHILL CZO located on a hillslope agroecosystem (vineyard) over a period of two years (2021–2022) by combining soil characterization and field hydrological measurements, including weighing lysimeters, sensor measurements, and LSF collection system measurements. Lysimeters were placed on the hilltop and the footslope, both having a dynamic controlled bottom boundary, which corresponded to field pressure head measurements, to mimic field soil–water dynamics. Water balance components between the two positions on the slope were compared with the goal of identifying differences that might reveal hydrologically driven differences due to LSF paths across the hillslope. The usually considered limitations of these lysimeters, or the borders preventing LSF through the domain, acted as an aid within this installation setup, as the lack of LSF was compensated for through the pumping system at the footslope. The findings from lysimeters were compared with LSF collection system measurements. Weighing lysimeter data indicated that LSF controlled ETa rates. The results suggest that the onset of LSF contributes to the spatial crop productivity distribution in hillslopes. The present approach may be useful for investigating the impact of LSF on water balance components for similar hillslope sites and crops or other soil surface covers. © 2023 by the authors.

Sojourners or a new diaspora? Economic implications of the movement of Chinese miners to the south-west Pacific goldfields

- Reeves, Keir

  • Authors: Reeves, Keir
  • Date: 2010
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Australian Economic History Review Vol. 50, no. 2 (2010), p. 178-192
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  • Description: Chinese gold seekers were the largest non-British group on the goldfields of Australasia and constituted the largest nationality on some diggings. In considering the movement of Chinese miners to and throughout the goldfields colonies of the southwest Pacific, this articles argues there existed a more complex pattern of migration than that suggested by the sojourner model of arrival, brief stay and departure. It examines the links between migration patterns and economic activity, and argues that economic history perspectives complement the insights offered by recent social and cultural history in the field.

Sojourning and settling: Locating Chinese Australian history

- Reeves, Keir, Mountford, Benjamin

  • Authors: Reeves, Keir , Mountford, Benjamin
  • Date: 2011
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Australian Historical Studies Vol. 42, no. 1 (2011), p. 111-125
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  • Description: During the past thirty years, our understanding of the history of Chinese Australians has been remade. Today, as a growing community of researchers delves into the archives, new insights into the political, economic and cultural dimensions of Chinese Australian experiences are emerging. The tired, one-dimensional depictions of the sojourning celestial digger have, at last, given way to a more complex view. Historians of the Chinese in Australia have been both instigators and beneficiaries of a move towards a more inclusive, multicultural approach to Australian history within the academy and beyond. They have played an important role in challenging the often peripheral status of specialised ethnic and multicultural studies, or 'ethno-histories', within Australian historiography. At the same time, their efforts to better understand the history of the Chinese in Australia have provided a 'valuable counterpart' to ongoing research into Australia's relations with Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soldier in Boer War uniform [picture].

- Gleeson, Cornelius.

  • Authors: Gleeson, Cornelius.
  • Date: 1899-1902
  • Type: Still Image
  • Full Text: false
  • Description: Item held by Gippsland and Regional Studies Collection, Federation University Australia.
  • Description: Record generated from title list.
  • Description: 24-Jun-91

Soldier settlement at Yanakie : The making of a model post-war rural community

- Glowrey, Cheryl

  • Authors: Glowrey, Cheryl
  • Date: 2018
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Victorian Historical Journal Vol. 89, no. 1 (2018), p. 89-112
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  • Description: Recommendations made by the Commonwealth Rural Reconstruction Commission in 1944 were influential in shaping new policies for post-war land settlement. The Victorian Soldier Settlement Commission applied these ideas, hand-picking settlers who would make successful farmers. At Yanakie, in South Gippsland, a decision to turn crown land into a group soldier settlement scheme resulted in a model rural community where post-war technology transformed the environment into productive dairy farms. Interviews with those involved locally look beyond the policy to the experiences of the settlers and employees of the Soldier Settlement Commission during the 1950s and 1960s.

Solomon Maimon

- Jones, Graham

Solubilisation of Victorian brown coal in 'distillable' DIMCARB

- Qi, Ying, Tikkoo, Tarun, Verheyen, Vincent, Ranganathan, Vijayaraghavan, MacFarlane, Douglas, Chaffee, Alan

  • Authors: Qi, Ying , Tikkoo, Tarun , Verheyen, Vincent , Ranganathan, Vijayaraghavan , MacFarlane, Douglas , Chaffee, Alan
  • Date: 2013
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: 30th Annual International Pittsburgh Coal Conference 2013, PCC 2013
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  • Description: Victorian (Australia) brown coal is an abundant and cheap energy resource. There is intense interest in identifying new opportunities for its efficient and clean use, for example by solubilisation to produce high quality fuel or chemicals. Ionic liquids (ILs) have been applied increasingly in recent years to solubilize and recover cellulose, lignin and other components from complex biomass mixtures. Conventional ILs are not distillable and it can be difficult to separate the soluble product from the solvent. However, there is a group of ILs, produced by the association of a secondary amine and CO2 that are 'distillable' in that they will dissociate back to the respective amine and CO2 at moderate temperature to facilitate recovery. They can then be re-associated (recycled) by condensation at lower temperature. The simplest form of such ILs, DIMCARB, consists of dimethylamine associated with CO2 at a molar ratio of 2:1. DIMCARB has previously been found to be superior (in terms of solubility) to other ILs in this group for the extraction of a Victorian brown coal. In this study the extractability of a woody coal sample was compared with a run-of-mine (ROM) sample, both without pretreatment. The wet coal was mixed with DIMCARB at a dry mass ratio of 1 to 20 for 24 hours at room temperature. The soluble product was recovered by centrifuge and acid washed to remove residual DIMCARB. An extraction yield of 25% was achieved for the ROM sample, while for the woody coal the yield was only 10%. The recovered products were characterized by a range of chemical techniques including FTIR and Pyrolysis GC-MS. The lower solubility of the woody coal seems to be associated with a high degree of oxygen containing aromatic components. The nature of this difference and the selectivity of the extraction are discussed.

Soluble organic components of winery wastewater and implications for reuse

- Mosse, Kim, Verheyen, Vincent, Cruickshank, Alicia, Patti, Antonio, Cavagnaro, Timothy

  • Authors: Mosse, Kim , Verheyen, Vincent , Cruickshank, Alicia , Patti, Antonio , Cavagnaro, Timothy
  • Date: 2013
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Agricultural Water Management Vol. 120, no. (2013), p. 5-10
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  • Description: Sustainable reuse of winery wastewaters (WWW) via land application is of interest given the increasing industrialization of wine production. However, before WWW reuse can become widespread, its chemical composition and consequently its potential long-term impact need to be investigated. In this study, soluble materials in influent and effluent waters from different WWW treatment plants were analyzed at the molecular level using Solid Phase Micro Extraction Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (SPME GC–MS). The analytical focus was on key compound classes with potential for environmental harm, the majority of which were reduced by all treatments considered here. The effluents retained considerable quantities of recalcitrant phenolic compounds, which is of concern due to their potential phytotoxicity and proven resistance to aerobic degradation. This research highlights the importance of understanding the nature of organic material in WWW to ensure sustainable reuse.

Soluble, semivolatile phenol and nitrogen compounds in milk-processing wastewaters

- Verheyen, Vincent, Cruickshank, Alicia, Wild, Karl, Heaven, M., McGee, R., Watkins, Mark, Nash, David

  • Authors: Verheyen, Vincent , Cruickshank, Alicia , Wild, Karl , Heaven, M. , McGee, R. , Watkins, Mark , Nash, David
  • Date: 2009
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Dairy Science Vol. 92, no. 7 (2009), p.
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  • Description: Potable water is an essential and major input in processing our food supplies, and the continued growth in food manufacturing is placing increased pressure on this limited resource. Recycling and reuse of factory wastewater can lessen potable water use but requires a detailed understanding of wastewater properties. This study uses solid-phase extraction techniques with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis to investigate trace-level semivolatile organic species in various waste and reference waters associated with the Burra Foods milk-processing plant located in Southeastern Australia. Our focus was on contaminants containing phenolic and heterocyclic nitrogen functional groups, which, because of their toxicity and persistence, may limit options for water recycling and reuse. Effluent from the wastewater treatment plant of the factory showed both the highest soluble carbon burden (47 mg/kg) and concentrations of target compounds. The target species found in these effluents included methyl phenol (13 mg/kg), hydroxy indole (9.8 mg/kg), synthetic tolyltriazoles (5.1 mg/kg) and alkyl phenol ethoxylates (0.2 mg/kg). Given the environmental stability of the tolyltriazoles, they may act as chemical markers where these effluents are used for purposes such as irrigation. Milk evaporator condensate waters, in contrast to the effluent, contained very few target species, with only low levels of pyrrolidine and piperidine derivatives such as ethylglutarimide (450 mug/L) detected. Although there were fewer target microcontaminants overall in the potable and creek reference waters, these samples had characteristic profiles. The potable water analysis revealed hydroxy cineole (2.1 microg/L) and the creek analysis revealed dichlorohydroxyacetophenone (0.3 microg/L), which were not detected in other waters. The compounds found in the wastewaters are likely to have been derived from milk or synthetic chemicals used in factory operations. The presence of nitrogen compounds in all the different milk-processing waters suggest their likely source was milk, probably milk phosphoproteins subjected to thermal, chemical, or microbial degradation. Our benign results for the condensates suggest it may be possible to substitute condensate for potable water with minimal pretreatment, both within the plant and in other applications, such as irrigation of recreation turf.

Solution suboptimality and differentiability of optimization problem of multistage control system

- Dymkou, Siarhei, Minchenko, L. I

Solutions to quadratic minimization problems with box and integer constraints

- Gao, David, Ruan, Ning

Solving a system of nonlinear integral equations by an RBF network

- Golbabai, A., Mammadov, Musa, Seifollahi, Sattar

  • Authors: Golbabai, A. , Mammadov, Musa , Seifollahi, Sattar
  • Date: 2009
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Computers & Mathematics with Applications Vol. 57, no. 10 (2009), p. 1651-1658
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  • Description: In this paper, a novel learning strategy for radial basis function networks (RBFN) is proposed. By adjusting the parameters of the hidden layer, including the RBF centers and widths, the weights of the output layer are adapted by local optimization methods. A new local optimization algorithm based on a combination of the gradient and Newton methods is introduced. The efficiency of some local optimization methods to Update the weights of RBFN is Studied in solving systems of nonlinear integral equations. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Solving DC programs using the cutting angle method

- Ferrer, Albert, Bagirov, Adil, Beliakov, Gleb

Solving ESL sentence completion questions via pre-trained neural language models

- Liu, Qiongqiong, Liu, Tianqiao, Zhao, Jiafu, Fang, Qiang, Ding, Wenbiao, Wu, Zhongqin, Xia, Feng, Tang, Jiliang, Liu, Zitao

Solving Euclidian travelling salesman problem using discrete-gradient based clustering and kohonen neural network

- Ghosh, Moumita, Ugon, Julien, Ghosh, Ranadhir, Bagirov, Adil

Solving facility location problem based on duality approach

- Ruan, Ning

  • Authors: Ruan, Ning
  • Date: 2015
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: 3rd World Congress on Global Optimization in Engineering and Science, WCGO 2013; Anhui, China; 8th-12th July 2013 Vol. 95, p. 165-172
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  • Description: The facility location problem is one of the most widely studied discrete location problems, whose applications arise in a variety of settings, such as routers or servers in a communication network, warehouses or distribution centres in a supply chain, hospitals or airports in a public service system. The problem involves locating a number of facilities to minimize the sum of the fixed setup costs and the variable costs of serving the market demand from these facilities. First a dual problem is developed for the facility location problem. Then general optimality conditions are also obtained, which generate sequences globally converging to a primal and dual solutions, respectively. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.