Soil quality problems such as erosion, depleted soil organic matter, salinity, depleted or excessive nutrient reserves and reduced water holding capacity are of increasing concern to farmers in the Intermountain West. Marginal soils require higher rates of fertilizers and other amendments to meet crop needs. As input costs rise and water resources are increasingly limited, simple and effective methods for evaluating and improving soil quality and fertility are of growing importance. Practices known to improve soil quality include reduced to no tillage, cover crop use- especially legumes, and addition of mulch and other carbon rich amendments. Comprehensive soil quality testing is often not routine, cost prohibitive, unavailable or confusing to interpret. The purpose of this study was to develop tools to help growers improve and monitor soil quality. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of the project. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the effectiveness of simple soil tests that can be performed by growers on-site. The most effective simple soil testing methods were found to be modified slake tests, the Solvita® respiration test kit, and soil organism biodiversity counts (R = 0.88, R = 0.88, R = 0.68 respectively). Simple nutrient test kits, correlated somewhat with laboratory results (the highest correlation was R = 0.80), however no simple test kit was accurate across all tests provided. Chapters 4 and 5 investigate organic nutrient management practices for peach orchards in the Utah, illustrating examples from: Captiol Reef National Park, Torrey, in southcentral Utah; and Utah State University Horticultural Research Farm, Kaysville, in northern Utah.

From the Proceedings of the 1973 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - May 4-5, 1973, Tucson, Arizona / An infiltrometer was designed to more closely simulate natural storm characteristics and still maintain sufficient portability to be used in various test sites in the field. In addition to portability, a relatively large test plot can be used over a relatively long duration. The instrument is designed to produce rainfall intensities of 2 to 6 inches per hour which are comparable to natural storm intensities found in northern Arizona. Capillary tubes produce water drops of equivalent kinetic energy at impact to natural raindrops. Errors due to lateral flow are minimized through peripheral wetting. Mounting the infiltrometer on a four-wheel drive vehicle allows nearly the portability of a hand carried unit with a greater water carrying capacity and allows the equipment to be large enough to test a representative plot.

From the Proceedings of the 1975 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 11-12, 1975, Tempe, Arizona / Current catchment methods of measuring precipitation have several problems which affect their accuracy. The physical presence of the gage disturbs windflow patterns and reduces catch. Other errors of less significance arise from evaporation from the gage, and wetting of the gage. A method is described of measuring precipitation by scattering light from a beam by waterdrops. The sampling medium is a collimated beam from a helium-neon laser. The amount of light scattered is a function of the number and size of drops intercepting the beam.

La conservación del patrimonio cultural esta considerado como un principio fundamental en la vida cultural de las sociedades modernas. En los últimos años, se han realizado extensas investigaciones en torno a esta área, conduciendo a desarrollos en la inspección, ensayos no destructivos, monitorización y análisis estructural de monumentos.Por otra parte, el análisis de construcciones antiguas formula importantes desafíos dada la complejidad de su geometría, la variabilidad de las propiedades de los materiales tradicionales, las diferentes técnicas de construcción, la ausencia de conocimiento sobre los daños existentes, y de cómo afectan determinadas acciones a las construcciones a lo largo de su vida.Dichos desafíos suponen que las construcciones del patrimonio arquitectónico estén sometidas a una serie de dificultades de diagnóstico y restauración, que limitan la aplicación de las disposiciones normativas y las pautas vigentes en el ámbito general de la construcción. Y es por todo ello que la comprensión, el análisis y la reparación de construcciones históricas se establece como uno de los desafíos más importantes de los técnicos modernos.¿Sería razonable operar a un enfermo sin tener constancia objetiva del mal que adolece?, en ese caso ¿porqué intervenimos en nuestra herencia cultural sin tener conocimiento contrastado de las causas desencadenantes de sus procesos patológicos?Respondiendo a la cuestión formulada, las intervenciones en las construcciones antiguas, dada su fragilidad, requieren precisión, detalle y formación especial en el desarrollo de un estudio previo riguroso de diagnóstico que de soporte a las decisiones sobre las técnicas de intervención que deben adoptarse.En este proceso es fundamental la fase de reconocimiento - análisis, dado que es en esta etapa en la que se plantean hipótesis y se comprueban, de forma objetiva, a través de cálculos y ensayos. Dentro de la fase referida, debe prestarse especial atención al reconocimiento experimental, dado que dicha inspección además de contribuir a la obtención de parámetros de entrada de los modelos de análisis, tiene como misión el contribuir a calibrarlos mediante la comprobación experimental de los resultados obtenidos analíticamente en determinados puntos de control.Por su parte, es deseable que dicho reconocimiento experimental se realice de la forma menos intrusiva posible para con la construcción, sobremanera en el caso de bienes de carácter monumental.En línea con lo argumentado, la investigación que se presenta incide, dentro del proceso metodológico general de intervención en una construcción antigua, en la fase del reconocimiento experimental, in situ, ligeramente destructivo, y a su vez, dentro de éste, en las técnicas orientadas a obtener información útil desde un punto de vista de la caracterización mecánica de elementos estructurales de fábrica.En este sentido, se pretende contribuir a la puesta a punto, en España, de métodos para la evaluación in situ de la fiabilidad de los elementos estructurales existentes en construcciones históricas de obra de fábrica. Para ello, se van a focalizar los esfuerzos en el calibrado, en laboratorio, de las técnicas de gatos planos, hole drilling y mini-presurometría de fábricas, y posteriormente se aplicarán a casos reales in situ. / Cultural heritage conservation is considered as a fundamental principle of modern societies' cultural life. In recent years, extensive research has been done on this area, leading developments on inspection, non-destructive testing, monitoring and monument structural analysis.In other hand, old buildings analysis implies significant challenges due to the complexity of its geometry, variability of traditional materials properties, different construction techniques, lack of knowledge about existing damage, and how certain actions affect throughout their life to buildings.These challenges mean that architectural heritage buildings are subject to diagnosis and refurbishment difficulties, which limit the application of standards and construction guidelines. That is why the understanding, the analysis and the historic buildings' repair, are considered as one of the most important challenges of modern technicians.Would it be reasonable to operate a patient without objective evidence of the illness that suffers? In that case, why do we intervene in our cultural heritage without knowing the causes that have initiated its pathological processes?Answering to this question, interventions in old buildings, because of its fragility, require accuracy, detail and a special education in the development of a previous diagnostic study, in order to give support to decisions to be adopted on intervention techniques.In this process, it is essential the phase survey - analysis, because it is at this stage where the hypothesis are set out and verified with calculations and tests. Within this phase, it should pay special attention to experimental survey, since such inspection contributes to both obtaining input parameters of the model analysis, and contributes to calibrate it using the experimental verification of the results obtained analytically at certain checkpoints.Moreover, it is desirable that such experimental survey is performed of the least intrusive way as possible for the construction, greatly in the case of monumental constructions.Within the general process of intervention on old constructions, the research presented insists on the on-site experimental survey stage, slightly destructive, and within it, on the techniques aimed to obtain useful information for the mechanical characterization of masonry structural elements.In this sense, it aims to contribute to the development in Spain of methods for on-site evaluation of the structural elements' reliability in masonry historical buildings. For this, efforts will focus on the calibration, in laboratory, of the techniques of flat jacks, hole drilling and masonry mini-pressurometer, and then its application to real on-site cases.