Discover

The PSB group's research encompasses a variety of topics, including the study of fundamental soil-forming processes in natural environmental gradients and the study of anthropogenic forces' effect on critical soil processes and functions like carbon sequestration and elemental cycling. Below is a summary of some of the research projects we have led or collaborated on, including some of our work in progress. We recognize soils as diverse, complex, dynamic interfaces that interconnect the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. Soils are the product of natural development or evolution as well as human interventions, which combined determine their characteristics and behavior. 

Ongoing Projects

SSOIL-COP: Soil Science Integrated Learning and Career Opportunity Partnership 
​Soil science education programs have shrunk considerably during the 1990s despite soil scientists’ high demand and are among the least demographically diverse STEM disciplines. SSOIL-COP aims to attract underserved students to pursue soil science careers and increase their enrollment and retention in undergraduate and graduate education through a coordinated multistate collaborative program. We are a cooperative consortium of eight HSI and emerging institutions from Texas and California encompassing diverse levels of education, from community colleges, 4-year universities, and advanced research universities in collaboration with USDA-NRCS and the Soil Health Institute. ​This consortium will substantially contribute to diminishing the racial, gender, and ethnic gap in soil science, boost soil science student enrollment retention, and create sustainable career pathways.
Project funded by USDA-NIFA-HSI Program.
Project funded by USDA-NRCS. Image created using Co-Pilot Designer.
Constraining Dynamic Biogeochemical Response to Flooding in Coastal Urban and peri-urban soils
This project seeks to create an index of susceptibility of dynamic soil properties to flooding for urban and peri-urban soil carbon, nutrients, and heavy metals. The project focuses on the most heavily populated urban and peri-urban areas of Houston, Beaumont, and Corpus Christi, TX, all located along the Gulf Coast and frequented by fresh- and salt-water flooding. We aim to 1. Identify and determine the magnitude of alteration of soils recurrently affected by sea-water flooding.  2. Quantify carbon, nutrient, and heavy metal fluxes during flooding of representative soil series of Texas's coastal zone.  3. Determine short-term physicochemical impact during simulated flooding events in the field, monitor long-term recovery of previously flooded soils, and develop an index of vulnerability to coastal flooding. 
Predicting and Quantifying Soil Dynamic Changes in Urban Environments
Soils experience dynamic changes on spatial and time scales not captured by traditional soil surveys. As human disturbances expand and accelerate, so will the impacts of these factors on soil properties and functions. This is especially true of soils in cities in the U.S., which are
undergoing heightened urban expansion. However, no standard approach currently exists to identify or provide information regarding the status of soils in areas impacted by urbanization. Soils in these urban settings contribute a myriad of key services to the cities’ ever-growing
populations, including food provision, temperature moderation, flooding control, and water filtration, among many others. The project goal is to develop a standard protocol to detect soils that have undergone significant changes due to urbanization, and quantify the magnitude of change in relevant soil functional properties and their spatial distribution.
Research Funded by USDA- NRCS. Image created with Co-Pilot Designer
Research funded by USDA- NRCS. Image created with Co-Pilot Designer
Enhance Weathering (EW) for Carbon Capture
​The application of rock powders as soil amendments  has been proposed as one of the most effective and easily adaptable technology for carbon capture in agricultural and forest settings. The principle of this technology is very simple and it is based on a naturally occurring process, "mineral silicate weathering", which is in fact the main controller of atmospheric CO2 concetration at geological scales. In EW mafic rock materials are generally apply directly to the soil. These materials consume carbonic acid during weathering, releasing silica, cations and bicarbonate ions. Some of this bicarbonate may precísate as carbonates or leach out of the soil  ending up in aquifers and surface waters. Despite its apparent simplicity, it is not very clear how effective is EW on truly sequestering carbon under different, landscape,  climatic and soil conditions and how different management practices may affect this process. PSB will be testing the potential of this technique for carbon capture and nutrient provision to crops as part of a 5 million USDA -Climate Smart Partnership led by Prairie View A&M. 
FireAnts Bioturbation 
​Fire Ants are one of the most widespread invasive insect specie in the southeast USA. In Texas is estimated that fire ants cause substantial economical losses to farmers and ranchers and affect the life of many in urban centers. One aspect of this invasion that has been greatly overlooked is the effect on soils. When you are in the field you will easy recognize the presence of fire ant because of their characteristics soil mounds.  We are looking at the effect of fire ants invasion and their mounds on soil properties, specifically at the effect of bioturbation on vertical multi elemental distribution. In addition we are assessing the disturbance in vertical carbon distribution and changes in green house gas emission patterns and infiltration patterns. 
Fuente: ACES- U Illinois 
Agriculture Intensification and weathering 
​We are evaluating the long-term effects (˜100 years) of agricultural use and different fertilization strategies (manure, mixed and synthetic) on soil mineral weathering rates and formation of secondary minerals. For this we are using the archives samples from the Morrow Plots sampled across time from 1930's to 2021. This project is in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Margenot University of Illinois ​. We are using a suite of analytical approaches to evaluate the extend of changes including estimation of weathering rates (WDXRF), quantitative minerology through XRD and DSC-TG, estimation of organo-mineral complexes and pseudo crystalline phases through selective dissolutions, and many more.  
Photos from: https://aces.illinois.edu/research/history/morrow-plots  
Soil reclamation in fly ash deposit
Dr. Aburto started this project through a collaboration between Foresta Nativa-UdeC and ENEL S.A. in 2018. We have recently initiated the 3rd phase of this project. The PSB lab will evaluate indicators of early development of soils and soil functionality in this site. We will be using a combination of techniques to evaluate the early development of soil structure and mineral phases, including MicroCT Scan, aggregate stability, mineral-organic association, and quantification of metastable pseudo-crystalline and amorphous mineral phases. In addition, in collaboration with UDeC will continue evaluating functional recovery of the soils through many different indicators like soil respiration, enzyme activity, microbial biomass, earthworm counts and many others. 
Forest Carbon Associate Research ForCARe
This is a collaborative project sponsored by the International Collaboration Program of the Chilean National Agency of Science and Technology (ANID) and the Max Planck Institute (MPG) of Germany. In this case the network of collaborators includes Dr. Aburto (TAMU and UDeC), Dr. Susan Trumbore (MPG and UCI), Dr. Carlos Sierra (MPG), Dr. Rafael Rubilar (UdeC), Dr. Carolina Merino (UFRO), Dr. Francisco Matus (UFRO) and Dr. Claudia Czimczik (UCI).  The project aims to build a collaboration network  between the MPG and associated institutions focusing on soil carbon cycling in forest ecosystems. So far, the project has been assessing the changes on C and nutrient biogeochemical cycling after the conversion of native forest to exotic plantation forest. We have use different radiocarbon measurements to estimate the alteration in C residence time. We have also showed that the substitution of deciduous forest by conifer plantation drives additional alterations in soil chemical and mineralogical characteristics.   The project started in 2020 and is programed to finish in July of 2023. Publications associated to this project have been prepared, so stay tuned.  

Other collaboration projects

Earthshape SPP Consortium 
The driving question of this project is "how microorganisms, animals, and plants influence the shape and development of the Earth’s surface over time scales from the present-day to the distant geologic past?"
The Chilean Coastal Range was selected as the place to try to answer this question. For more information visit the project website: www.earthshape.net 
Firing
Devastating forest fires are increasing at alarming pace in many areas of the world. Temperate forests have  been specially impacted by this threat as climate extreme and changes in the landscape are propelling fire severity and extent. This project aims to assess multiple effect of wildfires in soils and biogeochemical nutrient and water cycling across natural forest and exotic planted forest in south central Chile. 
for more information visit our project website: https://proyectofiring.cl/
REDOX REACTIONS DRIVING PEDOGENESIS IN ANTARTIC SOILS 
In this project we are studying biotic and abiotic oxidation and reduction of iron and manganese sources effects over pedogenesis after glacier retreat in King Georqe Island in Antarctica. The project is led by Dr. Carolina Merino (PI) from University of La Frontera and Dr. Aburto among others as Co-PI and it was funded by the Chilean National Antarctic Institute  (INACH). The overall goal is to test the biotic and abiotic Fe and Mn contribution as pedogenic agents for soil formation, mainly focused on the SOM dynamic along various chronosequences in glacial foreland zones in the Maritime Antarctic Ice-free coastal line. Image created using Co-Pilot.