Using accelerating mass spectrometry (AMS) dating method, a dating has been made on the primary calcium carbonate in tills and secondary calcium carbonate coating on till gravel and the roche moutonnee formed since th...Using accelerating mass spectrometry (AMS) dating method, a dating has been made on the primary calcium carbonate in tills and secondary calcium carbonate coating on till gravel and the roche moutonnee formed since the Last Glaciation at the source area of the Urumqi River valley in the Tianshan Mountains, northwestern China. The results reveal that the carbonate content in the tills in this noncarbonate area is high enough to date by AMS, that the carbon in the coatings on the newly exposed roche moutons and in the modern till is modern carbon and so the 14 C dating results in the ancient till can represent the actual ages of the till formation, and that the warm period during the Holocene began as early as 6 500 a B.P. and lasted to 1 800 a B.P.展开更多
Glacial tills are widely distributed in Tibet, China, and are highly susceptible to landslides under intense rainfalls. Failures of the slope during rainfall are closely related to the shear behavior of glacial tills ...Glacial tills are widely distributed in Tibet, China, and are highly susceptible to landslides under intense rainfalls. Failures of the slope during rainfall are closely related to the shear behavior of glacial tills at different moisture conditions. This study investigates the shear behavior and critical state of saturated and unsaturated glacial tills through a series of drained direct shear tests. The tests were conducted on two types of compacted glacial tills with different water contents and total normal stresses. A strain softening mode of failure is observed for all water content conditions accompanied by noticeable dilation. Dilatancy is found to decrease with increasing water content. Unsaturated samples showed increased rates of dilation as water content is decreased for all applied normal stresses a behavior which cannot be predicted well by classical stressdilatancy models. Furthermore, it was found that the Critical State Line(CSL), plotted on the(e-ln) plane, can be used to define the shear behavior of unsaturated glacial tills at different water contents.The CSL of saturated glacial tills run parallel to this line. The experimental results in this study are aimed to provide a basic understanding to the underlying failure mechanisms of glacial tills.展开更多
Glacial tills are highly compressible soils composed of loosely cemented sandy silt particles.Their role,for instance,as initial filler materials in geo-technical projects along temperate glacier regions warrant a sys...Glacial tills are highly compressible soils composed of loosely cemented sandy silt particles.Their role,for instance,as initial filler materials in geo-technical projects along temperate glacier regions warrant a systematic evaluation of their compressive characteristics.As such,we carry out a series of onedimensional compression tests on re-compacted glacial till samples obtained from Tianmo Gully,Tibet,with the aims of evaluating their compressive behavior under controlled initial stress conditions.The yield stress was determined from the void ratio versus consolidation pressure(e-log)planes.Its compression and swelling behaviors were observed during the primary and secondary compressions of the consolidation tests.From the compression curves,a correlation can be found between the consolidation stress and the void index.In addition,we find that the compression curves of glacial tills collapse into a single curve when normalized by the compression index.The experimental results in this study provide a basic understanding of the compression characteristics of the glacial tills in Tibet,China.展开更多
Global food demand requires that soils be used intensively for agriculture, but how these soils are managed greatly impacts soil fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2). Soil management practices can cause carbon to be either ...Global food demand requires that soils be used intensively for agriculture, but how these soils are managed greatly impacts soil fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2). Soil management practices can cause carbon to be either sequestered or emitted, with corresponding uncertain influence on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The situation is further complicated by the lack of CO2 flux measurements for African subsistence farms. For widespread application in remote areas, a simple experimental methodology is desired. As a first step, the present study investigated the use of Bowen Ratio Energy Balance (BREB) instrumentation to measure the energy balance and CO2 fluxes of two contrasting crop management systems, till and no-till, in the lowlands within the mountains of Lesotho. Two BREB micrometeorological systems were established on 100-m by 100-m sites, both planted with maize (Zea mays) but under either conventional (plow, disk-disk) or no-till soil mangement systems. The results demonstrate that with careful maintenance of the instruments by appropriately trained local personnel, the BREB approach offers substantial benefits in measuring real time changes in agroecosystem CO2 flux. The periods where the two treatments could be compared indicated greater CO2 sequestration over the no-till treatments during both the growing and non-growing seasons.展开更多
The Swedish Wet compaction method allows soil compaction at higher water content than conventional Dry compaction methods and can be used to advantage when difficulties arise in keeping to a certain Dry compaction wat...The Swedish Wet compaction method allows soil compaction at higher water content than conventional Dry compaction methods and can be used to advantage when difficulties arise in keeping to a certain Dry compaction water content. Wet compaction was frequently applied for dam core soils of glacial till (moraine) up until late 1970s, and despite several advantages it is since no longer used in engineering practice. During the reconstruction of Burvattnet Main Dam in Sweden, the lack of dry core soil together with severe weather conditions made Dry compaction almost impossible. On the basis of laboratory compaction tests performed in compliance with the standard from the 1950s, and field compaction trials on site, this paper describes the steps taken to revisit the Wet compaction method, which made it possible to continue the filling works in keeping with the timeline of the project.展开更多
Rain-fed(dryland)farming is an ancient agricultural production system in China.It occurs widely across almost the whole country,especially in the Northwest and North China.The semi-arid Loess Plateau is the most impor...Rain-fed(dryland)farming is an ancient agricultural production system in China.It occurs widely across almost the whole country,especially in the Northwest and North China.The semi-arid Loess Plateau is the most important region of rain-fed farming in China,but unfortunately,soil erosion on the Loess Plateau area is the highest in China,and indeed amongst the highest in the world.This highlights the necessity for developing practices that can reduce soil and water erosion,improve soil water use efficiency,improve crop productivity,and reduce rural poverty in the region.Many techniques of soil and water conservation are being used in rain-fed areas of China,including such systems as mulch,ridge and furrow systems.The Appendix describes a unique system of soil and water conservation,called Shatian.Modern research on conservation tillage(No Till),although essential for reducing erosion,increasing crop productivity,and ameliorating poverty,is just beginning in China.Modern conservation tillage research started in the1990s’with support from Australia and other countries.The procedures,however,were modified to be in accord with local conditions and prevailing farmer experiences.With 10 years of experimentation,results show that the most successful conservation practice on the Western Loess Plateau is no till with stubble retention.This technique helps to conserve soil water,increases soil organic carbon,improves soil structure and water infiltration,reduces soil and water erosion,and improves crop productivity and sustainability of rain-fed farming systems.However,its adoption rate remains low due to barriers such as traditional attitude,insufficient rural extension,and so forth.展开更多
Approaches to soil conservation are in constant evolution and improvement.This paper summarizes some of the modern approaches,ranging from no till to conservation agriculture to sustainable land management.These appro...Approaches to soil conservation are in constant evolution and improvement.This paper summarizes some of the modern approaches,ranging from no till to conservation agriculture to sustainable land management.These approaches are not separate,but components of a continuum of conservation approaches applicable at different levels and different scales.No tillage is important at the detailed,farm level,while CA and SLM are important at the farming systems and corporate levels.The successes achieved with no till in Argentina(also Brazil,Paraguay,Uruguay,Mexico,Canada,Australia,and others)illustrate how these concepts relate to each other.展开更多
Three types of natural soils are studied in this paper: 1) a postglacial silt, 2) a glacial till, and 3) a postglacial sand. The former two are soils from embankment dam sites in Sweden, and the latter is a soil from ...Three types of natural soils are studied in this paper: 1) a postglacial silt, 2) a glacial till, and 3) a postglacial sand. The former two are soils from embankment dam sites in Sweden, and the latter is a soil from a natural deposit situated in the Swedish east coastal region. In situ Double-ring infiltrometer (DRI) tests are compared with laboratory constant-head permeability determinations. This study shows that the DRI tests conducted on sandy-silty soils are within sufficient range to the laboratory results, to suggest that in situ near-saturated infiltration capacity may be used as a field estimate of hydraulic conductivity (permeability) for this range of soils. In situ infiltrometer testing may be the better alternative when there is difficulty in achieving representative field conditions in a laboratory setting, e.g., for widely graded soils such as glacial tills.展开更多
In Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos,Pound mourns the unjust execution of Louis Till,Emmett Till's father.This essay argues that the unusually sympathetic representation of Till in the poem was made possible by Pound&...In Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos,Pound mourns the unjust execution of Louis Till,Emmett Till's father.This essay argues that the unusually sympathetic representation of Till in the poem was made possible by Pound's engagement with the ideas of activists for black liberation like Nancy Cunard and Langston Hughes;hence Pound,an avowed fascist,ultimately voices a critique of the“racial fascism”of the United States typical of discourses of black anti-imperialism.The essay concludes with exploring the antinomical racial logic of the Pisan Cantos,for which black political radicalism-the“Black Leninism”of Langston Hughes in particular-is revealed to be a constitutive,but repressed,ideological interlocutor.展开更多
Previous soil-disc force prediction models have considered spherical and concave blades, as used on disc ploughs and harrows, with many simplifying assumptions. This study proposes an approach applying the fundamental...Previous soil-disc force prediction models have considered spherical and concave blades, as used on disc ploughs and harrows, with many simplifying assumptions. This study proposes an approach applying the fundamental equation of earth moving mechanics for calculating the soil passive reaction acting on a rotating fiat disc blade as used on a zero-till single disc seeder. The study considers the effects of disc variable depth of cut, sweep and tilt angles, free rotation and a scrubbing reaction at the beveled edge. This paper outlines the modeling approach and prediction results for a fixed circular blade operating at 90° sweep angle over a range of speeds and at two tilt angles. To account for the varying depth across the circular disc shape width, elemental wide blade force reactions acting on wide blade segments of elemental width were integrated across the disc working width. By including inertia forces due to speed as well as additional bulldozing forces due to the loose soil accumulation in front of the blade the draught and upward vertical forces acting on the vertical disc blade were predicted with a deviation of 6%-19% and 1.5%-14% from measured data, respectively. The model was able to predict the effect of increasing the tilt angle from 0° to 20° on reducing both draught and upward vertical forces. Further development and validation of the model will be described in subsequent papers, reflecting a step by step approach of increasing complexity to model a disc blade as used on a zero-till single disc seeding system.展开更多
文摘Using accelerating mass spectrometry (AMS) dating method, a dating has been made on the primary calcium carbonate in tills and secondary calcium carbonate coating on till gravel and the roche moutonnee formed since the Last Glaciation at the source area of the Urumqi River valley in the Tianshan Mountains, northwestern China. The results reveal that the carbonate content in the tills in this noncarbonate area is high enough to date by AMS, that the carbon in the coatings on the newly exposed roche moutons and in the modern till is modern carbon and so the 14 C dating results in the ancient till can represent the actual ages of the till formation, and that the warm period during the Holocene began as early as 6 500 a B.P. and lasted to 1 800 a B.P.
基金the financial support from the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) (grant no. QYZDB-SSW-DQC010)the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
文摘Glacial tills are widely distributed in Tibet, China, and are highly susceptible to landslides under intense rainfalls. Failures of the slope during rainfall are closely related to the shear behavior of glacial tills at different moisture conditions. This study investigates the shear behavior and critical state of saturated and unsaturated glacial tills through a series of drained direct shear tests. The tests were conducted on two types of compacted glacial tills with different water contents and total normal stresses. A strain softening mode of failure is observed for all water content conditions accompanied by noticeable dilation. Dilatancy is found to decrease with increasing water content. Unsaturated samples showed increased rates of dilation as water content is decreased for all applied normal stresses a behavior which cannot be predicted well by classical stressdilatancy models. Furthermore, it was found that the Critical State Line(CSL), plotted on the(e-ln) plane, can be used to define the shear behavior of unsaturated glacial tills at different water contents.The CSL of saturated glacial tills run parallel to this line. The experimental results in this study are aimed to provide a basic understanding to the underlying failure mechanisms of glacial tills.
基金financial support from the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no. QYZDB-SSW-DQC010)the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, Chinese Academy of Sciences
文摘Glacial tills are highly compressible soils composed of loosely cemented sandy silt particles.Their role,for instance,as initial filler materials in geo-technical projects along temperate glacier regions warrant a systematic evaluation of their compressive characteristics.As such,we carry out a series of onedimensional compression tests on re-compacted glacial till samples obtained from Tianmo Gully,Tibet,with the aims of evaluating their compressive behavior under controlled initial stress conditions.The yield stress was determined from the void ratio versus consolidation pressure(e-log)planes.Its compression and swelling behaviors were observed during the primary and secondary compressions of the consolidation tests.From the compression curves,a correlation can be found between the consolidation stress and the void index.In addition,we find that the compression curves of glacial tills collapse into a single curve when normalized by the compression index.The experimental results in this study provide a basic understanding of the compression characteristics of the glacial tills in Tibet,China.
文摘Global food demand requires that soils be used intensively for agriculture, but how these soils are managed greatly impacts soil fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2). Soil management practices can cause carbon to be either sequestered or emitted, with corresponding uncertain influence on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The situation is further complicated by the lack of CO2 flux measurements for African subsistence farms. For widespread application in remote areas, a simple experimental methodology is desired. As a first step, the present study investigated the use of Bowen Ratio Energy Balance (BREB) instrumentation to measure the energy balance and CO2 fluxes of two contrasting crop management systems, till and no-till, in the lowlands within the mountains of Lesotho. Two BREB micrometeorological systems were established on 100-m by 100-m sites, both planted with maize (Zea mays) but under either conventional (plow, disk-disk) or no-till soil mangement systems. The results demonstrate that with careful maintenance of the instruments by appropriately trained local personnel, the BREB approach offers substantial benefits in measuring real time changes in agroecosystem CO2 flux. The periods where the two treatments could be compared indicated greater CO2 sequestration over the no-till treatments during both the growing and non-growing seasons.
文摘The Swedish Wet compaction method allows soil compaction at higher water content than conventional Dry compaction methods and can be used to advantage when difficulties arise in keeping to a certain Dry compaction water content. Wet compaction was frequently applied for dam core soils of glacial till (moraine) up until late 1970s, and despite several advantages it is since no longer used in engineering practice. During the reconstruction of Burvattnet Main Dam in Sweden, the lack of dry core soil together with severe weather conditions made Dry compaction almost impossible. On the basis of laboratory compaction tests performed in compliance with the standard from the 1950s, and field compaction trials on site, this paper describes the steps taken to revisit the Wet compaction method, which made it possible to continue the filling works in keeping with the timeline of the project.
文摘Rain-fed(dryland)farming is an ancient agricultural production system in China.It occurs widely across almost the whole country,especially in the Northwest and North China.The semi-arid Loess Plateau is the most important region of rain-fed farming in China,but unfortunately,soil erosion on the Loess Plateau area is the highest in China,and indeed amongst the highest in the world.This highlights the necessity for developing practices that can reduce soil and water erosion,improve soil water use efficiency,improve crop productivity,and reduce rural poverty in the region.Many techniques of soil and water conservation are being used in rain-fed areas of China,including such systems as mulch,ridge and furrow systems.The Appendix describes a unique system of soil and water conservation,called Shatian.Modern research on conservation tillage(No Till),although essential for reducing erosion,increasing crop productivity,and ameliorating poverty,is just beginning in China.Modern conservation tillage research started in the1990s’with support from Australia and other countries.The procedures,however,were modified to be in accord with local conditions and prevailing farmer experiences.With 10 years of experimentation,results show that the most successful conservation practice on the Western Loess Plateau is no till with stubble retention.This technique helps to conserve soil water,increases soil organic carbon,improves soil structure and water infiltration,reduces soil and water erosion,and improves crop productivity and sustainability of rain-fed farming systems.However,its adoption rate remains low due to barriers such as traditional attitude,insufficient rural extension,and so forth.
文摘Approaches to soil conservation are in constant evolution and improvement.This paper summarizes some of the modern approaches,ranging from no till to conservation agriculture to sustainable land management.These approaches are not separate,but components of a continuum of conservation approaches applicable at different levels and different scales.No tillage is important at the detailed,farm level,while CA and SLM are important at the farming systems and corporate levels.The successes achieved with no till in Argentina(also Brazil,Paraguay,Uruguay,Mexico,Canada,Australia,and others)illustrate how these concepts relate to each other.
文摘Three types of natural soils are studied in this paper: 1) a postglacial silt, 2) a glacial till, and 3) a postglacial sand. The former two are soils from embankment dam sites in Sweden, and the latter is a soil from a natural deposit situated in the Swedish east coastal region. In situ Double-ring infiltrometer (DRI) tests are compared with laboratory constant-head permeability determinations. This study shows that the DRI tests conducted on sandy-silty soils are within sufficient range to the laboratory results, to suggest that in situ near-saturated infiltration capacity may be used as a field estimate of hydraulic conductivity (permeability) for this range of soils. In situ infiltrometer testing may be the better alternative when there is difficulty in achieving representative field conditions in a laboratory setting, e.g., for widely graded soils such as glacial tills.
文摘In Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos,Pound mourns the unjust execution of Louis Till,Emmett Till's father.This essay argues that the unusually sympathetic representation of Till in the poem was made possible by Pound's engagement with the ideas of activists for black liberation like Nancy Cunard and Langston Hughes;hence Pound,an avowed fascist,ultimately voices a critique of the“racial fascism”of the United States typical of discourses of black anti-imperialism.The essay concludes with exploring the antinomical racial logic of the Pisan Cantos,for which black political radicalism-the“Black Leninism”of Langston Hughes in particular-is revealed to be a constitutive,but repressed,ideological interlocutor.
文摘Previous soil-disc force prediction models have considered spherical and concave blades, as used on disc ploughs and harrows, with many simplifying assumptions. This study proposes an approach applying the fundamental equation of earth moving mechanics for calculating the soil passive reaction acting on a rotating fiat disc blade as used on a zero-till single disc seeder. The study considers the effects of disc variable depth of cut, sweep and tilt angles, free rotation and a scrubbing reaction at the beveled edge. This paper outlines the modeling approach and prediction results for a fixed circular blade operating at 90° sweep angle over a range of speeds and at two tilt angles. To account for the varying depth across the circular disc shape width, elemental wide blade force reactions acting on wide blade segments of elemental width were integrated across the disc working width. By including inertia forces due to speed as well as additional bulldozing forces due to the loose soil accumulation in front of the blade the draught and upward vertical forces acting on the vertical disc blade were predicted with a deviation of 6%-19% and 1.5%-14% from measured data, respectively. The model was able to predict the effect of increasing the tilt angle from 0° to 20° on reducing both draught and upward vertical forces. Further development and validation of the model will be described in subsequent papers, reflecting a step by step approach of increasing complexity to model a disc blade as used on a zero-till single disc seeding system.
