JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

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In recent years, due to the increased population, urbanization and changes in human consumption patterns, urban, industrial and agricultural soils have been exposed to various pollutants such as heavy metals. The objective of this research was to identify hotspots of Pb by using global and local Moran Indices in urban and suburban soils of Kashafrood catchment. A total of 261 surface soil samples (0-15 cm deep) were taken using irregular girding network method and their total Pb concentrations were measured. The positive Moran index at confidence level of more than 99 percent showed the spatial clusters between observations. On the basis of local Moran index results, 15 samples were introduced as hotspots (high-high value) located southeast of Mashhad plain. Exclusion of extreme values resulted in the addition of high-high cluster (hotspots) leading to the extension of these areas to the West of the Mashhad city. These areas are introduced as hotspots due to the urban land use, the direction of prevailing wind, and the area being close to Mashhad airport.

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This study is aimed to investigate the spatial variation of soil macronutrients such as phosphorus, potassium and organic matter using different methods of Geostatistics and Geostatistical method combined with Fuzzy logic to estimate the values of this element to provide a spatial distribution map for the proper distribution of fertilizer in the plain of Uremia. Spatial variations in soil nutrients are natural but knowing these changes for careful planning and management particularly in the agricultural lands is simply inevitable. This information is necessary to increase the profitability and sustainable agricultural management. Therefore, to estimate the changes in the elements of places not sampled, the Kriging, Fuzzy Kriging, Cokriging and Inverse Distance Weighting  methods have been used in GS +. In this study, Matlab 9.1 software was used to fuzzification of the data and GIS was used for the final mapping. The parameters MAE, MBE and RMSE were used to compare these methods. The results showed that the combined method of Fuzzy Geostatistic with the mean absolute error values for the elements phosphorus, potassium and organic matter i.e. 0.17, 0.18 and 0.18, respectively, is recognized as the preferred method based on which zoning maps have been prepared for P, K and OC in GIS.

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Urea is one of the most commonly used nitrogen fertilizers in agricultural lands. The fate of this fertilizer in soils is greatly related to the soil urease enzyme activity, while this enzyme commonly exists in the adsorbed state on the surface of soil colloids, and especially clay minerals. In order to examine the kinetic properties of free and adsorbed Urease on the surface of sepiolite and vermiculite, an experiment was carried out with eight levels of urea concentration (5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 mM). This experiment was done with enzyme concentration of 1 unit in temperature of 25˚C and pH=7. Adsorption of urease on the clay surfaces affected its kinetic properties compared to the free state. The results showed that urease enzyme obeyed Michaelis-Menten kinetic in both free and adsorbed states on the clay surfaces. Except free urease, the highest and lowest values of V_max and K_m were observed in urease-sepiolite and urease-vermiculite complexes, respectively. Also, the results showed that except free urease, the highest levels of Catalytic Efficiency were related to urease in the presence of vermiculite and sepiolite, respectively. The Effectiveness Factor was more for adsorbed urease on the sepiolite surface than adsorbed urease on the vermiculite surface, and the fact somehow suggests more complete diffusion in the presence of sepiolite.