How to measure and manage the soil effect in terroir expression

Terroir relates the taste of wine to the place where it was produced. It involves the influence of climate, soil, cultivar and viticultural practices. Huge progression has been achieved over the past years in the understanding of how the soil can shape the quality and the style of a wine. To do so, the soil effect needs to be broken into measurable factors. Once these are quantified by appropriate approaches, terroir can be mapped and managed. By fine-tuning the choice of plant material (rootstock and variety) and viticultural techniques to local soil conditions, it is possible to optimize terroir expression.

Seismic Hazard Assessment and Numerical Modeling for Seismic Microzonation purpose of Dushanbe, Tajikistan

<p>Seismic hazard assessment of urban areas is an important and extremely challenging task. It is so important because without the knowledge of the influence of local soil conditions and properties, of the changing layer thickness in urban areas, and without considering multiple possible scenario earthquakes for this territory, engineers do not have enough information on how to design and construct seismically safe buildings. The particular challenge of this task is due to the great uncertainty affecting the prediction of the spatially (and sometimes even temporally) changing seismic properties of soils with respect to urban development.<br>Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan, a mountainous country marked by high to very high seismic hazard. The reason for the high seismic hazard specifically near Dushanbe is related to its location between two fault systems: South Gissar fault and Ilek-Vaksh fault.  Estimation of the seismic hazard of the urban areas in Tajikistan is very important because they had developed in a very short time and many high buildings are being constructed now Existing seismic action estimations are based on the old approaches when the main factors of the local soil conditions only consider general engineering-geological features of the territory as well as macro-seismic observations data. An additional problem is the building code in Tajikistan; it uses the estimation of the ground motions in terms of the MSK-64 scale, but does not enough take into account the variety of the soil conditions in the Dushanbe city area. Existing seismic hazard estimation of the area of Tajikistan is based on the so-called “The map of general seismic zoning of the territory of Tajikistan”, that was produced in 1978 in terms of MSK-64 scale. The seismic microzonation map of the Dushanbe city area was made in 1975 in terms of MSK-64 scale as well and was based on the engineering-geological approach mostly. This map does not represent the highly variable soil conditions of the Dushanbe city area which are partly due to the anthropogenic influence of the large city. Therefore, earlier seismic zonation maps assigned an intensity of IX to most districts of the city. However, those previous studies did not sufficiently quantify the local effects of soils on the seismic hazard, mainly the macro-seismic conditions (the relative distance of districts to fault lines) were considered for the zonation. <br>This study describes and implements a number of new approaches to the evaluation of maximum seismic impact and site effect values. </p>

Woody plants constructing tundra soils

In tundra, woody plants are expanding towards higher latitudes and altitudes due to increasingly favourable climatic conditions. Their expansion may also occur through increases in the coverage and height of the plants. These shifts may cascade further across the ecosystem, such as in the foundations of tundra: that is, in the soils. Yet, little is known about the effects woody plants have on local soil conditions. Here, we examined if the coverage and height of woody plants affect the growing-season soil moisture and temperature as well as soil organic carbon stocks. We carried out a field observation study in a dwarf shrub–dominated tundra and built a hierarchical model. We found that, after controlling for other possible factors influencing woody plants and soil conditions (namely, topography, snow, and the overall plant coverage), the coverage of woody plants inversely correlated with all three soil conditions. Yet, we found no link between the woody plant height to the soil variables. This indicates that woody plants affect local soil conditions in various ways, depending upon whether their expansion occurs though the growth of coverage or their height. Nevertheless, woody plants likely alter the very ground of the entire tundra system and feedback into the global climate system through the water, energy, and carbon cycles of tundra.

Permafrost Thaw with Thermokarst Wetland-Lake and Societal-Health Risks: Dependence on Local Soil Conditions under Large-Scale Warming

A key question for the evolution of thermokarst wetlands and lakes in Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost regions is how large-scale warming interacts with local landscape conditions in driving permafrost thaw and its spatial variability. To answer this question, which also relates to risks for ecology, society, and health, we perform systematic model simulations of various soil-permafrost cases combined with different surface-warming trends. Results show that both the prevalence and the thaw of permafrost depended strongly on local soil conditions and varied greatly with these for the same temperature conditions at the surface. Greater ice contents and depth extents, but also greater subsurface volumes thawing at depth under warming, are found for peat soils than other studied soil/rock formations. As such, more thaw-driven regime shifts in wetland/lake ecosystems, and associated releases of previously frozen carbon and pathogens, may be expected under the same surface warming for peatlands than other soil conditions. Such risks may also increase in fast permafrost thaw in mineral soils, with only small thaw-protection effects indicated in the present simulations for possible desertification enhancement of mineral soil covers.

Anticipate Construction of Single Pylon Cable-Stayed Kretek II Bridge in Near-Fault Zone

<p>The earthquake event occurred with a magnitude of 7.4 which caused a tsunami and liquefaction was the cause the Ponulele bridge collapse, which precisely cut the location of the fault. Such events are expected not to occur in other locations. The characteristics of Kretek II cable-stayed bridge location is relatively identical to the location of the Ponulele Bridge. The distance of Opak fault from the location of the planned Kretek II Bridge is approximately 20 m with a slip-rate of 2.4 mm/year. This situation is also exacerbated by local soil conditions that have the potential for liquefaction.</p>

The 2014 Earthquake in Iquique, Chile: Comparison between Local Soil Conditions and Observed Damage in the Cities of Iquique and Alto Hospicio

In this study, we present comparisons between the local soil conditions and the observed damage for the 1 April 2014 Iquique earthquake. Four cases in which site effects may have played a predominant role are analyzed: (1) the ZOFRI area, with damage in numerous structures; (2) the port of Iquique, in which one pier suffered large displacements; (3) the Dunas I building complex, where soil-structure interaction may have caused important structural damage; and (4) the city of Alto Hospicio, disturbed by the effects of saline soils. Geophysical characterization of the soils was in agreement with the observed damage in the first three cases, while in Alto Hospicio the earthquake damage cannot be directly related to geophysical characterization.