State of the Art Report on Global and Regional Soil Information: Where are we? Where to go? (original) (raw)
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Soil and Its Role in the Ecosystem
Environmental Chemistry for a Sustainable World, 2017
Soil is highly heterogeneous body in the terrestrial ecosystem that has evolved through thousands of years of natural processes and has remained habitat for enormous biodiversity. Due variability in seasonal temperature, rainfall, parent materials and vegetation, different types of soils have been found in India; and each of these soils have distinct mineralogical compositions, physical and chemical properties. Such heterogeneity has resulted wide variations in the response of soils to polluting activities which causes differential location specific impacts. To understand the interaction of pollutants with soil constituents and their impact on agroecosystems, basic knowledge on various aspects of soil resources and its functions are essential. This chapter describes in brief, the major soil types of India and their properties, role of soil constituents on its quality, different soil forming processes, inhabiting organisms and their role in different soil nutrient cycling processes affecting crop productivity. Keywords Soil type • Ecosystem • Organisms • Pedogenic processes • Agroecological zone • India Soil is a highly heterogeneous body in respect of physical, chemical and biological characteristics as well as constituents and such heterogeneity arises both at microand macro-scale in all three dimensions. Pollutants interact quite differently with each of its constituents and hence, impact of anthropogenic activities on ecosystem varies widely. This necessitates a comprehensive understanding on soil and its role in the ecosystem by the personnel's involved in environmental impact assessment. This chapter briefly describes the important aspects of soil science mainly in the perspective of crop productivity. Soil is a resource on which every person's life, well-being and fulfillment depend. Poor management reveals itself in terms of social and economic costs along with political repercussions. No sustainable agriculture and sustainable development is possible without this awareness. Present societies show little interest in this regard, and soil is often considered as no more than a support for human activities. We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity for use by us but when we see it as a part of community to which we belong, we start looking at it with respect. If soil is viewed as precious resource, its use should abide by certain rules and a number of conditions so that different ecosystem functions are protected
Soil and Environmental Management
Sustainable Management of Soil and Environment, 2019
Climate change is a variation in atmospheric properties due to natural and human activities over a long period of time. In the last few decades, there was a significant change in the gaseous composition of earth’s atmosphere, mainly through increased energy use in industry and agriculture sectors, viz. deforestation, intensive cultivation, land use change, management practices, etc. These activities lead to increase the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), etc., popularly known as the “greenhouse gases” (GHGs), and rise up the temperature. These GHGs cause regional and global changes in the climate-related parameters such as rainfall, soil moisture, and sea level. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected temperature rise from 0.5 to 1.2 ° C by 2020, 0.88 to 3.16 °C by 2050, and 1.56–5.44 °C by 2080 for India. To mitigate this climate change, among the different means, soil is also one of the key components of the agricultural produc...
Soils are the fragile and fertile skin of planet earth, and through their functioning as both buffers and filters they provide the natural capital stocks on which 20% of New Zealand's Gross Domestic Production (GDP) is based. Further, the buffering and filtering functions that soils provide as ecosystem services maintain the health and vitality of our terrestrial and aquatic realms. In this review, we outline how new technologies are providing better vision of the soils' ability to store resources such as water and nutrients, and also of their ability to filter, or leak, fertilisers and pesticides. We highlight the critical role played by soil organic matter in establishing the soils' structure and health, and the impact this has on buffering and filtering. Our improved understanding is providing knowledge that can be used to build decision support tools for sustainable management and eco-verification protocols.
The role of soils in sustaining society and the environment
IUSS Division 4 & Newsletter Information Division Chair's Report Articles How to keep soils sexy after the IYS? International Decade of Soils One of our own elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy 8 Can microbes survive the drying of the world's soils. Signatures of the Anthropocene in contemporary soils Five years have passed since the nuclear accident at Fukushima, Japan Memories-Mud Mural in the Rice Gallery 13 The Mystery of the mile-long 'band-of-holes' could be solved 14 SciFi brings a focus on soil to the general public
Soil as a Basic Nexus Tool: Soils at the Center of the Food–Energy–Water Nexus
Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports, 2017
Purpose of Review Soil is the medium for plant growth and the substrate for all biogeochemical and biogeophysical processes. Soil's unique natural organization forms the foundation of any food-water-energy nexus system. It forms a habitat for billions of diverse micro, meso, and macrofauna and flora and is the basis of numerous ecosystem services essential to human well-being and nature conservancy. It moderates soil hydrological processes within the entire vadose zone: which is part of the earth between the soil surface and the phreatic zone. Soil structure also supports numerous ecosystem services including nutrient transformation and availability, water quality and renewability, denaturing and transport of pollutants, and groundwater table fluctuations. It also moderates the soil-water-plant-energy nexus with the replenishement of greenwater supply (from precipitation) for plants and soil biota, which in turn enables the production of biomass as a source of food, feed, fiber, and biofuel feedstock. Indeed, soil is a very large reservoir for water and carbon with strong influences on local, regional, and global climate. Also, the energy factor is connected with the climate change through soil-water-food-energy nexus because of numerous interlinked pathways including gaseous emissions, energy and food production, and recycling of nutrients and water at regional, national, and global scales. Through provisioning of numerous ecosystem services, the soil-water-food-energy-climate nexus is interwoven with the ecosystem security and functioning of planet's four ecospheres (i.e., atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and the biosphere). Therefore, the health of soil, plants, animals, people, and ecosystems is one and indivisible. Recent Findings This interconnectivity is also the basis of the "4 per Thousand" initiative adopted by the COP21, the Climate Summit of 2015 in Paris, and "Adapting African Agriculture" (AAA) by COP22 in Morocco. Consequently, soil is not only a foundation for securing the natural resources: food, water and energy, but it is under desperate need to be integrated and appreciated in understanding the complex interconnectedness of any food, energy, water and soil system. Concentration and stock of soil organic carbon are the key soil properties that determine the physical, chemical, biological, and ecological properties and processes, and are major control of all nexuses described herein. Summary This chapter presents a conceptual model and the role of soil as a naturally organized medium to protect global food, water, energy securities. Moreover, it elaborates on using soil as a basic nexus tool and proposes a paradigm shift in integrating soil and creating the food-energy-water-soil nexus.
Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Reports, 2018
"Soil health" is a term that is used to describe soil quality. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service has defined soil health as "The continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals and humans (NRCS 2018)." For a farmer, soil health is the productive capacity of the soil, or the capacity of the soil to produce a crop or pasture. Healthy soils produce more and with better quality. Soil health is critical for water and nutrient cycling. Soil captures rainwater and stores it for use by plants. Soil health is important to improve both the amount of water and nutrients that a soil can hold, and the availability of water and nutrients for plants. The storage of water and nutrients and subsequent transfer to plants are critical determinants of the productive capacity of the soil, and the soil health. Here, we explore the fundamental components of soil, and how each component contributes to soil health and soil productive capacity.
The Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources made an invitation for this talk to update the Faculty on the research developments in the area of Soil Function supported by the Cotton Catchments Community CRC