This book presents a comprehensive and up-to-date overview on soils of Greece. It includes sections on soil research history, climate, geology, geomorphology, major soil types, soil maps, soil properties, soil classification, soil fertility, land use and vegetation, soil management, soils and humans, soils and industry, future soil issues. The book summarizes what is known about the soils in Greece in a concise and highly reader-friendly way.
This book compiles information gained by an EU research network over six years of research on European volcanic soils. It gives comprehensive coverage of soils in volcanic regions within Europe, dealing with most aspects of modern day soil science. New methodology is introduced and the synthesis of the research casts a new light on soils with andic soil properties.
Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Markets, Households and City-States in the Ancient Greek Economy brings together sixteen essays by leading scholars of the ancient Greek economy. The essays investigate the role of market-exchange in the economy of the ancient Greek world in the Classical and Hellenistic periods.
This publication contains the papers presented at the 15th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE), held in Athens, Greece. Considerable progress has been made in recent decades in understanding the engineering behavior of those hard soils and weak rocks that clearly fall into either the field of soil or of rock mechanics, and there have been important developments in design and construction methods to cope with them. Progress would be even more desirable, however, for those materials which fall into the ‘grey’ area between soils and rocks. They present particular challenges due to their diversity, the difficulties and problems arising in their identification and classification, their sampling and testing and in the establishment of suitable models to adequately describe their behavior. The publication aims to provide an updated overview of the existing worldwide knowledge of the geological features, engineering properties and behavior of such hard soils and weak rocks, with particular reference to the design and construction methods and problems associated with these materials. Part 4 was published post-conference and includes Conference Reports.
How did ancient societies change the environment and how do their actions continue to affect us today? In this dramatically revised and expanded second edition of the work entitled Pan’s Travail, J. Donald Hughes examines the environmental history of the classical period and argues that the decline of ancient civilizations resulted in part from their exploitation of the natural world. Focusing on Greece and Rome, as well as areas subject to their influences, Hughes offers a detailed look at the impact of humans and their technologies on the ecology of the Mediterranean basin. Evidence of deforestation in ancient Greece, the remains of Roman aqueducts and mines, and paintings on centuries-old pottery that depict agricultural activities document ancient actions that resulted in detrimental consequences to the environment. Hughes compares the ancient world's environmental problems to other persistent social problems and discusses attitudes toward nature expressed in Greek and Latin literature. In addition to extensive revisions based on the latest research, this new edition includes photographs from Hughes's worldwide excursions, a new chapter on warfare and the environment, and an updated bibliography.
The first soil survey in the Philippines was done by Mr. Clarence Dorsey, an American soil scientist in the province of Batangas in 1903. The Soils of the Philippines, however, is the first comprehensive summary of more than a century of soil-survey work in this country. It integrates the soil concepts of the reconnaissance soil-survey results, which commenced as early as 1934 and continued until the mid 1960s, with the semi-detailed soil surveys that continue to this day. The result is the first-ever genetic key for classifying Philippine soils at soil series level; thus, making it possible for any newcomers to the soil survey field to confidently produce their own soil map, at a more detailed map scale, to suit the project requirements. This book brings together discussions on soils and soil mapping units and up-to-date international techniques and technologies. It makes soils relevant to current political realities and national issues. As soil survey moves from a reductionist agricultural-development planning tool to a more holistic and integrated approach, to enable us to understand our dynamic and complex environment, The Soils of the Philippines will be the only source of authoritative and updated data on soil resources for macro-level resource management planning for decades to come. With a vanishing breed of experienced soil surveyors, not only in the Philippines but also worldwide, it may remain the only book on Philippine soils for the next hundred years or more. Since soils follow a geological and not a human time frame, the contents of this volume will stay relevant for soil surveyors even in a fast changing world. As the country leaps from an agricultural economy towards modernization and a more diversified economic base, some of the soil series in the Philippines, for example the Guadalupe series underlying the skyscrapers of Makati City, are becoming extinct as a result of urban development. Therefore, this book serves as the repository for the soils that we possess, the soils that have been lost through decades of urbanization while, at the same time, it creates a soil classification system for the soils we are yet to discover.
This book divides Antarctica into eight ice-free regions and provides information on the soils of each region. Soils have been studied in Antarctica for nearly 100 years. Although only 0.35% (45,000 km2) of Antarctica is ice-free, its weathered, unconsolidated material qualify as “soils”. Soils of Antarctica is richly illustrated with nearly 150 images and provisional maps are provided for several key ice-free areas.
