Annual Congress on Soil Sciences Dec 4-5, 2017 Madrid, Spain

Slaveya Petrova has her expertise in bio monitoring of the urban air pollution. She is currently working on construction of the model for assessing the ecological status of the urban landscapes. rnrn

Statement of the Problem: Soil microbiology is a key component in urban ecosystems. Bacterial communities take part in different soil processes as mineralization of the organic matter, humus synthesis, nutrient supply and nitrogen fixation. They are of primary importance for soil quality and natural productivity. Urban infrastructure and development are one of the most severe threats for microbial communities’ structure and well-being. Anthropogenic pressure results in pollution of all components of the urban environment, damaging the soil properties. The purpose of this study is to assess the microbial status of soils from urban parks on the basis of total viable count of bacteria (TVC22 and TVC37), actinomycetes and fungi, combined with the presence of Escherichia coli, fecal coliforms (FC) and fecal streptococci (FS) as a pollution indicator. rnrnMethodology & Theoretical Orientation: Soil samples are taken from 8 urban parks in the city of Plovdiv with different degree of anthropogenic pressure - 4 big and 4 small, situated in the urban and suburban zone. All samples are dissolved into sterile saline and incubated at room temperature for 30 min on 200 rpm in order to free the microorganisms from soil particles. Standardized methods are used for studied parameters evaluation. rnrnFindings: Maximum of TVC22 and TVC37 were found in the big city parks in suburban zone. Fungi were also more abundant into soil samples from big parks and less presented into small parks in the west and central urban zone. Actinomycetes have not been found in two of the big parks which indicated their bad quality. Pathogenic forms were prevailing in the big parks, especially in the central urban zone. rnrnConclusion & Significance: Statistical evaluation confirmed the relationship between the anthropogenic pressure and microbial status of urban soils, both with the influence of the wind rose as a factor.rn

Ju Hyoung Lee is a Research Professor at the Seoul National University. She mainly deals with soil moisture, a key variable in water cycle and ECV (Essential Climate Variable). Her expertise lies in a stochastic approach in removing satellite retrieval errors. With respect to this topic, she recently published a review paper titled “Stochastic Bias Correction and Uncertainty Estimation of Satellite-Retrieved Soil Moisture Products” to Remote Sensing Journal. It was the innovative and distinguished research that casts an argument on whether the errors are estimated by relative difference or independently estimated from self-perturbing the algorithm, and suggests a novel perspective of probabilistic retrievals by discovering the power of Gaussian distribution. She is also discovering the unknown mechanism of interactions between soil moisture and rainfall using satellite observations and models as well as data assimilation techniques.

This study will report on the application of remote sensing on estimation of soil and hydraulic properties. Because uncertainties and errors in land surface models arise from land surface parameters based upon the empirical formula limited to validation sites, an inversion approach for estimating soil parameters is suggested to accommodate vertical and spatial heterogeneity. As compared to the approach using formulations or repeated calibrations, this approach has the merits in that there is no need to define or formulate soil conditions, and there is no scale issue between local observations and spatial scales. Data will illustrate that it is possible to acquire the appropriate level of spatial distribution in soil hydraulic properties, resulting in better simulation of soil moisture. It will be also discussed how to improve the quality of remote sensing data, and its impact on pedology estimation. Several discussions on available soil maps, and their limitations will be provided.rnrn