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At least 289 records · Page 16
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1983

Spectral reflectance of surface soils: Relationships with some soil properties

Using a published atlas of reflectance curves and physicochemical properties of soils, a statistical analysis was carried out. Reflectance bands which correspond to five of the wavebands used by NASA's Thematic Mapper were examined for relationships to specific soil properties. The properties considered in this study include: Sand Content, Silt Content, Clay Content, Organic Matter Content, Cation Exchange Capacity, Iron Oxide Content and Moisture Content. Regression of these seven properties on the mean values of five TM bands produced results that indicate that the predictability of the properties can be increased by stratifying the data. The data was stratified by parent material, taxonomic order, temperature zone, moisture zone and climate (combined temperature and moisture). The best results were obtained when the sample was examined by climatic classes. The middle Infra-red bands, 5 and 7, as well as the visible bands, 2 and 3, are significant in the model. The near Infra-red band, band 4, is almost as useful and should be included in any studies. General linear modeling procedures examined relationships of the seven properties with certain wavebands in the stratified samples.

Kiesewetter, C. H.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Utilization of active microwave roughness measurements to improve passive microwave soil moisture estimates over bare soils

Multisensor aircraft data were used to establish the potential of the active microwave sensor response to be used to compensate for roughness in the passive microwave sensor's response to soil moisture. Only bare fields were used. It is found that the L-band radiometer's capability to estimate soil moisture significantly improves when surface roughness is accounted for with the scatterometers.

Theis, S. W.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Significance of foundation-soil separation in dynamic soil-structure interaction

THe dynamic response of flexible surface strip-foundations allowed to uplift is numerically obtained for externally applied forces of a transient time variation. The soil medium is represented by an isotropic, homogeneous and linear half-space. The soil is treated by a time domain boundary element method, while the flexible foundation is treated by the finite element method. It was concluded that intermediate relative stiffness leads to moderate deformations when uplift is permitted. Very flexible footings produce higher deformations in unilateral contact compared to bilateral contact, and thus should be considered in their design. Unilateral contact does not significantly increase deformations for stiff footings subjected to concentrated central loading. However, relatively large deformation differences occur when the loading is eccentric, necessitating consideration of uplift in their design.

Spyrakos, Constantine C.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Converting Soil Moisture Observations to Effective Values for Improved Validation of Remotely Sensed Soil Moisture

We compare soil moisture retrieved with an inverse algorithm with observations of mean moisture in the 0-6 cm soil layer. A significant discrepancy is noted between the retrieved and observed moisture. Using emitting depth functions as weighting functions to convert the observed mean moisture to observed effective moisture removes nearly one-half of the discrepancy noted. This result has important implications in remote sensing validation studies.

Laymon, Charles A.↗
NASA NTRS2009

A Model of Thermal Conductivity for Planetary Soils: 1. Theory for Unconsolidated Soils

We present a model of heat conduction for mono-sized spherical particulate media under stagnant gases based on the kinetic theory of gases, numerical modeling of Fourier s law of heat conduction, theoretical constraints on the gas thermal conductivity at various Knudsen regimes, and laboratory measurements. Incorporating the effect of the temperature allows for the derivation of the pore-filling gas conductivity and bulk thermal conductivity of samples using additional parameters (pressure, gas composition, grain size, and porosity). The radiative and solid-to-solid conductivities are also accounted for. Our thermal model reproduces the well-established bulk thermal conductivity dependency of a sample with the grain size and pressure and also confirms laboratory measurements finding that higher porosities generally lead to lower conductivities. It predicts the existence of the plateau conductivity at high pressure, where the bulk conductivity does not depend on the grain size. The good agreement between the model predictions and published laboratory measurements under a variety of pressures, temperatures, gas compositions, and grain sizes provides additional confidence in our results. On Venus, Earth, and Titan, the pressure and temperature combinations are too high to observe a soil thermal conductivity dependency on the grain size, but each planet has a unique thermal inertia due to their different surface temperatures. On Mars, the temperature and pressure combination is ideal to observe the soil thermal conductivity dependency on the average grain size. Thermal conductivity models that do not take the temperature and the pore-filling gas composition into account may yield significant errors.

Piqueux, S.↗
DOE OSTI2022

16s Amplicon Analysis of Soil Data for Interactive effects of depth and differential irrigation on soil microbiome composition and functioning

Genomic DNA was isolated from soil and rhizosphere samples using the Zymo Quick-DNA fecal/soil microbe miniprep kit (catalog no. D6010) according to the manufacturer’s instructions (Zymo Research; Irvine, CA) with the modification of eluting in 100 uL elution buffer. Sample concentrations were quantified using the Qubit dsDNA HS assay kit (Thermo Fisher). For rhizosphere samples only, DNA was subsequently purified using Zymo’s ZR-96 DNA Clean & Concentrator kit (catalog no. D4024) to account for low DNA concentrations of these samples. . In each replicate block, there were five drip irrigation treatments (T1 = 100% normal irrigation, T2 = 56.25%, T3 = 37.5%, T4 = 18.75% and T5=no irrigation. On July 20, the strength of the drought treatments was increased: T1 remained at 100%, whereas T2 changed from 75% to 56.25%, T2 changed from 50% to 37.5%, and T4 changed from 25% to 18.75%. Sequencing was performed as described previously (Naylor, Fansler, et al. 2020). Sequences were amplified on the MiSeq platform (Illumina, San Diego, CA) using 16S primers (515F and 806R) specific to the V4 region. Raw sequence data was processed with the pipeline Hundo for amplicon quality control and annotation. Downstream statistical analyses on 16S datasets were performed using the program R and the packages ‘phyloseq’ and ‘vegan’.

Soil microbiome, metatranscriptomics↗
DOE OSTI2020

Plant‐mediated methane transport in emergent and floating‐leaved species of a temperate freshwater mineral‐soil wetland

Abstract Methane flux from freshwater mineral‐soil (FWMS) wetlands and its variability among sites is largely modulated by plant‐mediated transport. However, plant‐mediated transport processes are rarely resolved in land surface models and are poorly parametrized for plants commonly found in FWMS wetlands. Here, relationships between methane flux and CO 2 uptake, as well as plant conductance of methane were evaluated for three plant species and two characteristic functional types: emergent (narrow‐leaved cattail) and floating‐leaved (American lotus and water lily). We found significant but contrasting correlations between methane flux and CO 2 uptake in cattails ( r 2 = 0.51, slope = −0.16, during morning) and water lily ( r 2 = 0.32, slope = 0.064, after midday). This relationship was not significant in American lotus, showing that stomata regulation of methane fluxes is species‐specific and not generalizable across the floating‐leaved plant functional type. Conductance of methane per leaf area showed distinct seasonal dynamics across species. Conductance was similar among the floating‐leaved species (6.2 × 10 −3 m d −1 in lotus and 7.2 × 10 −3 m d −1 in water lily) and higher than conductance in the emergent species (2.7 × 10 −3 m d −1 ). Our results provide direct observations of plant conductance rates and identify the vegetation parameters (leaf area, stomatal conductance) that modify them. Our results further suggest that models of methane emissions from FWMS should parameterize plant‐mediated transport in different plant functional types, scaled by leaf area and with variable seasonal phenological dynamics, and consider possible species‐specific mechanisms that control methane transport through plants.

Villa, Jorge A.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Beryllium characterization in soils by selective extraction

In the present work, an analytical method has been developed for the determination of the amount of man-made beryllium metal and/or beryllium compounds in soil in addition to the amount of native beryllium that is present. The method is based on the premise that if high-fired beryllium oxide can be extracted efficiently, then beryllium metal and acid-soluble beryllium salts would also be extracted efficiently.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS1991

Geochemistry of 2-4-mm particles from Apollo 14 soil (14161) and implications regarding igneous components and soil-forming processes

The present paper describes the compositional systematics of 381 particles analyzed from 14161, which was taken near the lunar module as part of the bulk sample. Attention is given to the distribution of lithologies, based on petrographic examination and compositions determined by INAA, and to implications of the compositions of polymict particles regarding igneous precursors and soil-forming processes. It was found that the most abundant particles are the impact-melt lithologies and regolith and fragmental breccias. The mean composition of the entire suite of 2-4-mm particles differs from that of the associated less-than-1-mm fines by having higher concentrations of incompatible trace elements and Na2O, and a lower concentration of CaO. There is a subset of regolith breccia particles and agglutinates in the 2-4-mm particles that have nearly identical compositions and Is/FeO similar to those of the less-than-1-mm fines. It is suggested that these particles are constructional products formed from the local regolith rather than comminuted fragments of ancient regolith breccias.

Jolliff, B. L.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Possible petrogenetic associations among igneous components in North Massif soils: Evidence in 2-4 mm soil particles from 76503

Studies of Apollo 17 highland igneous rocks and clasts in breccias from the North and South Massifs have described magnesian troctolite, norite, anorthositic gabbro, dunite, spinel cataclasites, and granulitic lithologies that may have noritic anothosite or anorthositic norite/gabbro as igneous precursors, and have speculated on possible petrogenetic relationships among these rock types. Mineral compositions and relative proportions of plagioclase and plagioclase-olivine particles in samples 76503 indicate that the precursor lithology of those particles were troctolitic anorthosite, not troctolite. Mineral and chemical compositions of more pyroxene-rich, magnesian breccias and granulites in 76503 indicate that their precursor lithology was anorthositic norite/gabbro. The combination of mineral compositions and whole-rock trace-element compositional trends supports a genetic relationship among these two groups as would result from differentiation of a single pluton. Although highland igneous lithologies in Apollo 17 materials have been described previously, the proportions of different igneous lithologies present in the massifs, their frequency of association, and how they are related are not well known. We consider the proportions of, and associations among, the igneous lithologies found in a North Massif soil, which may represent those of the North Massif or a major part of it.

Jolliff, Bradley L.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Pigmenting agents in Martian soils: inferences from spectral, Mossbauer, and magnetic properties of nanophase and other iron oxides in Hawaiian palagonitic soil PN-9

We have examined a Hawaiian palagonitic tephra sample (PN-9) that has spectroscopic similarities to Martian bright regions using a number of analytical techniques, including Mossbauer and reflectance spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, instrumental neutron activation analysis, electron probe microanalysis, transmission electron microscopy, and dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate extraction. Chemically, PN-9 has a Hawaiitic composition with alkali (and presumably silica) loss resulting from leaching by meteoric water during palagonitization; no Ce anomaly is present in the REE pattern. Mineralogically, our results show that nanophase ferric oxide (np-Ox) particles (either nanophase hematite (np-Hm) or a mixture of ferrihydrite and np-Hm) are responsible for the distinctive ferric doublet and visible-wavelength ferric absorption edge observed in Mossbauer and reflectivity spectra, respectively, for this and other spectrally similar palagonitic samples. The np-Ox particles appear to be imbedded in a hydrated aluminosilicate matrix material; no evidence was found for phyllosilicates. Other iron-bearing phases observed are titanomagnetite, which accounts for the magnetic nature of the sample; olivine; pyroxene; and glass. By analogy, np-Ox is likely the primary pigmenting agent of the bright soils and dust of Mars.

Minerals/analysis↗