Spontaneous revegetation is the most cost-effective approach for the restoration of fly ash dumps that are increasing in area worldwide due to the growing power demand. The microbial assemblage established over nine years of fly ash dump revegetation was studied using high-throughput sequencing techniques. Although drastically different from the assemblages in the adjacent mature soil, both fungal and bacterial assemblages were quite diverse, providing broad potential functionality for sustaining further soil, plant community and entire ecosystem development.

Parent material is one of the crucial factors in interpreting soil formation processes, but there are not many parent material maps created using digital mapping techniques. This paper presents a method to create digital parent materials map using existing spatial information and mathematical modelling. The map is objective and can be used for further soil mapping and pedogenesis study.

Aggregation increases with decreasing intensity of soil management. No-tillage increases the levels and stocks of organic carbon in the physical and humic fractions of soil organic matter. Different management systems affected the carbon management index, physical and chemical fractionation of organic matter of soil.

Some soils in the southern Pantanal of Brazil have high levels of phosphorus. Phosphorus is associated with carbonates and organic matter. Only part of the phosphorus is available to plants. The studied soils showed high levels of labile phosphorus. The main forms of phosphorus were associated with carbonates and organic matter. The high levels of non-labile phosphorus were included in the microaggregates.