Teresa Taboada Rodríguez

Biogeography of terrestrial gastropods of north-west Spain.

We carried out a biogeographical study of the terrestrial gastropods of north-west Spain on the basis of sampling from 51 10 X 10 km quadrants in the regions of Asturias, Leon, Zamora and Salamanca. Classification of quadrants by species composition using indicator species analysis (program TwINsPAN) revealed a zonation which corresponds very closely to the phytoclimatic zonation developed by Rivas Martinez. Correspondence analysis (program cANoco), using nominal environmental variables, confirmed the TWINSPAN classification and allowed identification of those factors which are most important in determining the broad patterns of terrestrial gastropod distribution in north-west Spain. The region corresponding to Rivas Martinezs Eurosiberian region is characterized by mean annual precipitation in excess of 700 mm and high gastropod species richness; that corresponding to Rivas Martinezs Mediterranean region is characterized by mean annual precipitation below 700 mm and a lower gastropod species richness. It is also of interest that the Eurosiberian part of our study area is an older landmass (having emerged in the Palaeozoic) than the Mediterranean part (which emerged in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic).

Effects of organic fertilizers on soil physicochemistry and on the yield and botanical composition of forage over 3 years.

ABSTRACT Organic wastes have been reported to reduce saturation of the exchange complex by Al in Al-rich acid soils. For 3 years, the main soil fertility properties were studied in plots sown with mixed pasture species. These plots were fertilized with cattle slurry, dairy sludge (DS), or granulated broiler litter (BL) in comparison with mineral fertilizer. Al saturation levels were low after the initial inorganic liming treatment (19.00–33.71%) but tended to rise under all treatments (21.09–61.37%) except BL (8.45–30.98%), which was also associated with the highest average soil pH and the highest average levels of exchangeable Ca2+, Mg2+, and K+. Treatment DS performed similarly to mineral fertilizer in most respects, but it led to greater available P levels. Under the dry conditions of the second and third years of the study, BL and DS treatments were associated with significantly greater forage yields than the other treatments. Under DS treatment, available P levels were too low to allow the maintenance of mixed pasture, clover being eliminated by the less P-dependent species. IMPLICATIONS This paper presents important information for the enterprises that produce these types of organic waste. They could use these residues as new resources to achieve a new profit in two ways: sell the product (BL) or save money (not to pay to an environmental management company to apply a landfill program under actual European Union [EU] regulations) and to help some of them to achieve the Environmental Management Certificate (dairy industry) and be under EU environmental law.

Agro-Industrial Waste Management: A Case Study of Soil Fauna Responses to the Use of Biowaste as Meadow Fertiliser in Galiza, Northwestern Spain

© 2012 Matos-Moreira et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Agro-Industrial Waste Management: A Case Study of Soil Fauna Responses to the Use of Biowaste as Meadow Fertiliser in Galiza, Northwestern Spain