Projecting the evolution of soil due to global change (original) (raw)

Soil is a critical natural resource that inherently changes through time. This change is affected by a variety of natural and anthropogenic factors and their combined impacts. To preserve the soil and protect it, it is necessary to predict the consequences of human activities and global change on soil evolution. This can be achieved using soil evolution modelling. However, only a model that includes a large coverage of physical, chemical and biological processes, that considers feedback mechanisms between soil and soil forming factors, that has a detail description of flow of water, and that accounts for human activities on land (land use, agricultural practices) would be suitable for projection purposes. However, the evolution of key soil characteristics such as organic carbon (OC), are often simulated by models focusing on that specific soil characteristic and the sole soil processes acting on it. In this study, we first tested the sensitivity to variation of climate, land use and...