Potential water repellency influenced CO and CH release from moist soils: Experiments on water-repellent Japanese Andosols.

Soil, the largest terrestrial carbon (C) pool on earth is an important source of greenhouse gasses. Soil water repellency (SWR), a moisture-dependent characteristic, is an important factor that affects microbial decomposition and gas release since it causes non-uniform moisture distributions in the soil matrix. It is not clear whether potential water repellency (PWR), measured on dried soils, can influence carbon dioxide (CO) and methane (CH) emissions under unsaturated moist conditions.

Screening of plants for phytoremediation of oil-contaminated soil.

Several species of ornamental flowering plants were evaluated regarding their phytoremediation ability for the cleanup of oil-contaminated soil in Japanese environmental conditions. Thirty-three species of plants were grown in oil-contaminated soil, and Mimosa, Zinnia, Gazania, and cypress vine were selected for further assessment on the basis of their favorable initial growth. No significant difference was observed in the above-ground and under-ground dry matter weight of Gazania 180 days after sowing between contaminated and non-contaminated plots.

Non-destructive Analysis of Oil-Contaminated Soil Core Samples by X-ray Computed Tomography and Low-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Relaxometry: a Case Study.

Non-destructive measurements of contaminated soil core samples are desirable prior to destructive measurements because they allow obtaining gross information from the core samples without touching harmful chemical species. Medical X-ray computed tomography (CT) and time-domain low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxometry were applied to non-destructive measurements of sandy soil core samples from a real site contaminated with heavy oil. The medical CT visualized the spatial distribution of the bulk density averaged over the voxel of 0.