Erosion Control Forum.com Blog

A diverse team of researchers from Europe, Asia and the USA have unearthed new information on how roots grow and develop. Specifically, how roots are able to move out sideways out of the central root and into the soil. Their discovery has opened the way to further research that may eventually lead to the creation of new crops with improved root structure, improving their chances of survival in difficult soils. Roots provide the crops we eat with water and nutrients. They serve as a firm anchor, keeping them in place against violent winds, and as a place to store food against leaner times. All these attributes have made agricultural farming possible. A paper recently published in Nature Cell Biology has revealed for the first time how lateral root emergence is achieved. Their findings show that new lateral roots are actually able to 're-programme' the cells that overlay them; this ability causes them to separate thereby enabling the new root to emerge. Lateral roots, as their na...

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The International Conference on Scour and Erosion has become a respected event in the technical conference calendar for engineers, scientists, decision makers and administrators working in all areas of hydraulics and geo-engineering. Its importance and reputation was established by the technical successes of the first three conferences: College Station in USA(2002), Singapore(2004) and Amsterdam(2006). We are delighted to host the fourth International Conference on Scour and Erosion in Tokyo, Japan. The conference provides a forum to discuss new developments, concepts and practices, and to share field experiences, problems and solutions dealing with scour and erosion issues in hillslope, fluvial, estuarine and coastal environments. It also inspires cross-disciplinary contributions pertaining to morphodynamics and sedimentary evolution, with increased appreciation of multi-scaled nature in sediment processes. Tokyo, the capital of Japan, has been selected as the location for the confere...