On the meager limestone-based soils of Barolo and Barbaresco, in the heart of nebbia country, Nebbiolo gives some of Italy's greatest red wines.
Its mostly illiterate citizens were scattered over remote regions, often unable to find a common language, although they shared ample rigors as they wrested a meager subsistence from the soil or the sea.
However, information on essential nutrients in the soil across the region is meager.
Fatima Adimou, who farms just one hectare of land near the market town of Gorom Gorom, in northern Burkina Faso, complains of the efforts needed to coax only a meager harvest of millet from the sandy soil.
The coal companies have made only the most meager efforts to reclaim this devastated land by planting quick-growth pine trees, black locust, grass seed, and other plants that can live with high levels of acids in the soil.
Here we show that the sudden and massive input of water in regions that have remained hyperarid for millions of years is harmful for most of the surface soil microbial species, which are exquisitely adapted to survive with meager amounts of liquid water, and quickly perish from osmotic shock when water becomes suddenly abundant.
The soil had worn so thin that it produced one of the most meager crop yields of any place on earth.
With their meager supplies chucked aside to make room for more people on the dinghy, they made it to European soil with little more than the soaking wet clothes on their backs--but grateful to be alive.
At a few spots, the meager warmth of martian summer seems able to coax enough liquid water out of the ground to darken the soil in streaks.
Although many landslides are meager affairs that quickly sputter to a stop, others can eventually involve more than 1 billion cubic meters of soil and rock enough to fill the Louisiana Superdome more than 275 times flowing hundreds of meters at speeds of more than 10 meters per second.
