In:
Soil Science Society of America Journal, Wiley, Vol. 72, No. 5 ( 2008-09), p. 1269-1277
Abstract:
Carbon is an essential component of life and, in its organic form, plays a pivotal role in the soil's fertility, productivity, and water retention. It is an integral part of the atmospheric–terrestrial C exchange cycle mediated via photosynthesis; furthermore, it emerged recently as a new trading commodity, i.e., “carbon credits.” When carefully manipulated, C sequestration by the soil could balance and mitigate anthropogenic CO 2 emissions into the atmosphere that are believed to contribute to global warming. The pressing need for assessing the soil's C stocks at local, regional, and global scales, now in the forefront of much research, is considerably hindered by the problems besetting dry‐combustion chemical analyses, even with state‐of‐the‐art procedures. To overcome these issues, we developed a new method based on gamma‐ray spectroscopy induced by inelastic neutron scattering (INS). The INS method is an in situ, nondestructive, multielemental technique that can be used in stationary or continuous‐scanning modes of operation. The results from data acquired from an investigated soil mass of a few hundred kilograms to an approximate depth of 30 cm are reported immediately. Our initial experiments have demonstrated the feasibility of our proposed approach; we obtained a linear response with C concentration and a detection limit between 0.5 and 1% C by weight.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0361-5995
,
1435-0661
DOI:
10.2136/sssaj2007.0177
Language:
English
Publisher:
Wiley
Publication Date:
2008
detail.hit.zdb_id:
241415-6
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2239747-4
detail.hit.zdb_id:
196788-5
detail.hit.zdb_id:
1481691-X
SSG:
13
SSG:
21
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