Projects

No. A3013005 Holocene Evolution of Soil Cover of the Protected Landscape Areas of the Czech Republic

Grant Agency of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2000–2002
Leader: A. Žigová (Institute of Geology of the Czech Academy of Sciences), co-leader: V. Šrein (Institute of Rock Structure and Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Summary
The most important result of the project is a selection of sites located in protected landscape areas of the Czech Republic, where undisturbed natural soils on different parent materials on different geomorphological positions can be found and protected as a long term standard suitable for monitoring of environmental changes. The evidence of anthropogenic factor in the evolution of soil in the Holocene will be obtained by comparison between neighbouring natural and agricultural soils.

No. A300130504 Soil Cover of the Protected Areas of Prague as an Indicator of Environmental Changes

Grant Agency of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2005–2007
Leader: A. Žigová (Institute of Geology of the Czech Academy of Sciences), co-leader: M. Šťastný (Institute of Rock Structure and Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Summary
The project is aimed at the understanding of the elementary soil processes which contributed to the Pleistocene and Holocene development of structure soil cover in the protected areas of Prague. The wide spectrum of soil types will represent a basis for monitoring of environmental changes, soil regimes and specification of complex soil microprocesses. The network of soil profiles will also permit a comparison whose individual developmental stages were affected by no human activity.

No. 526/08/0434 Impact of Soil Structure on Character of Water Flow and Solute Transport in Soil Environment

Czech Science Foundation, 2008–2011
Leader: R. Kodešová (Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources), co-leader: A. Žigová (Institute of Geology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

Summary
Good knowledge of soil hydraulic properties is required for successful solution of pollutant transport, hydrological modeling of catchments and prediction of the plant production in soil. The project is aimed at experimental, analytical and numerical investigation of theory that multimodal character of soil pore size distribution and hierarchical pore composition influence not only the shape of soil hydraulic properties, but also total character of water flow and solute transport in soil porous media. In many cases, the soil porous system cannot be treated as one continuum (usual approach), but as two continuums assuming either appearance of zones with immobile water and zones with mobile water or two continuums with different soil hydraulic properties characterizing preferential flow. Another objective is evaluation of agricultural managment impact of soil properties and consequently on water flow and contaminant transport. The research will provide complex view on transport processes in soil that is important especialy for ground water protection.