Browsing by Author "Jayawardana, D. T."

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    Study of Cation Exchange Properties of Selected Sri Lankan Coastal Soils with Sea Water
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2013) Premathilake, D. S.; Udagedara, D. T.; Jayawardana, D. T.
    Ion exchange is a naturally occurring process that depends on several physical and chemical factors. In general, geology and climatic condition of an area are the major factors among them. Geology and climate are the controlling parameters to develop different soil types in a given area. Also, texture and other physical properties such as pH and oxidation reduction potential (ORP) effectively control the ion exchange properties in the soil. In Sri Lanka larger area of the island is covered with crystalline rocks of Precambrian age and has distinguish four major basement units (Cooray, 1984). Considering climate of the island the dry, wet and intermediate climatic zones are defined on the basis of rainfall. In other words climatic zones of Sri Lanka are divided based on the annual rainfall of the island based on detail demarcating inthesouthwesternregion of the countryincluding western part of thecentralhillcountry, DryZone predominantly covering north, north-east and eastern sectors of th ecountry. Intermediate Zone identified between the Wet and Dry zones. Moreover, for the separation of aforesaidmajor climatic zones,landuse, forestry,rainfallandsoilshavebeenwidelyused (Herath and Pathirana, 1983). Due to different geological settings and diverse climatic variations of Sri Lanka various soil types are formed. Since its special geographical locality there is a higher possibility to contaminate soils with sea water. Such possibilities are accounts Tsunami, Tidal effects and inland river sand mining. Therefore there is a possibility to contaminate sea water with pure natural soils. Therefore main objectives of the study is to find the ion exchange properties of natural soils in Sri Lanka with sea water. Results will able to investigate ion exchange capacity with respect to physico-chemical properties of different soils such as pH, Oxidation reduction potential and conductivity.