Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology (2023)

Royal Society Open Science

Systematic review of soil ecosystem services in tropical regions

Elaine Fidalgo

Soil ecosystem service (SES) approaches evidence the importance of soil for human well-being, contribute to improving dialogue between science and decision-making and encourage the translation of scientific results into public policies. Herein, through systematic review, we assess the state of the art of SES approaches in tropical regions. Through this review, 41 publications were identified; while most of these studies considered SES, a lack of a consistent framework to define SES was apparent. Most studies measured soil natural capital and processes, while only three studies undertook monetary valuation. Although the number of publications increased (from 1 to 41), between 2001 and 2019, the total number of publications for tropical regions is still small. Countries with the largest number of publications were Brazil ( n = 8), Colombia ( n = 6) and Mexico ( n = 4). This observation emphasizes an important knowledge gap pertaining to SES approaches and their link to tropical region...

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

The role of soils in habitat creation, maintenance and restoration

Gerlinde De Deyn

Soils are the fundament of terrestrial ecosystems. Across the globe we find different soil types with different properties resulting from the interacting soil forming factors: parent material, climate, topography, organisms and time. Here we present the role of soils in habitat formation and maintenance in natural systems, and reflect on how humans have modified soils from local to global scale. Soils host a tremendous diversity of life forms, most of them microscopic in size. We do not yet know all the functionalities of this diversity at the level of individual taxa or through their interactions. However, we do know that the interactions and feedbacks between soil life, plants and soil chemistry and physics are essential for soil and habitat formation, maintenance and restoration. Moreover, the couplings between soils and major cycles of carbon, nutrients and water are essential for supporting the production of food, feed and fibre, drinking water and greenhouse gas balances. Soil...

ACS Environmental Au

The Human Impact on All Soil-Forming Factors during the Anthropocene

bruno yaron

Gdańskie Studia Prawnicze

Effectiveness of the United Kingdom Soil Protection Laws in Protecting the Ecosystem Service of Carbon Sequestration Introduction

Iain Green

Carbon is crucial for life and exists in various reservoirs, such as plant tissues, soil organic matter, geology, and atmosphere. There is a direct relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere and rising temperatures. CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and stored in ecosystems. Carbon sequestration (CS) – the process of capturing and storing atmospheric CO2 – and expanding C storage of soils are appealing climate change (CC) responses. Agricultural soils are one of the largest C reservoirs and have potential for extended CS. Thus, protecting this ecosystem service (ES) we obtain from soils is crucial for addressing CC. Soil protection legislation should incorporate the significance of CS. The key issues in the sphere of natural resources can only be addressed by utilizing natural sciences in legal arguments. Accordingly, this study begins with highlighting the importance of soils for CS from a natural science perspective. This study analyses soil protection law...

Soil and Water Research

An overview of a land evaluation in the context of ecosystem services

2022 •

Jaroslava Janků

The environment is changing quickly and it is ever more burdened in connection with the greater needs of human society. This fact has increased efforts to improve the management of land and natural resources and the necessity to evaluate them. Land valuations become more important as the land consumption increases. Soil needs to be evaluated in the whole context of how its quality is affected and the values it provides. The concept of ecosystem services offers this holistic view. This paper defines ecosystem services (ES), the various linkages between soil properties, their functions and benefits, the assessment of soil quality using indicators and then briefly mentions EU environmental assessment methods and terms used in the context of ES. The article also mentions frameworks with which to assess and evaluate the soil quality that can be divided into two groups. The first group is comprised of a framework of indicators that describe the current state of the soil system assessment ...

Soil Use and Management

Soil quality and fertility in sustainable agriculture, with a contribution to the biological classification of agricultural soils

2021 •

Jean-François Ponge, Augusto Zanella

Soils and crops are nowadays particularly vulnerable to climate change and environmental stresses. In many agrosystems, soil biodiversity and the ecosystem services soil provides are under threat from a range of natural and manmade drivers. Agricultural soils are perturbated by the agronomic practices so far adopted, that disrupt soil trophic networks to a large extent, and make soils less and less productive in the long term. In this scenario, sustainable soil uses aimed at improving plant/root status, growth and development play a crucial role, as they have been found to enhance the biological capacity of agricultural soils. This review paper is divided into four main parts: a) The contentious nature of soil organic matter. A few points in Lehmann and Kleber's article may mislead thinking. We just want to stop and think before moving on. b) Soil biological quality/fertility. Soils are alive, organic, dynamic, because they are living systems. c) Soil classification. The concepts contained in the first two points were well known to the fathers of pedology but, unfortunately, their principles have been lost over time. d) Which agricultural practices can be defined as sustainable? As for point three, the desired spirit is that of a stimulating provocation. The published literature was analyzed within a holistic view, with agrosystems considered as living systems where soil, vegetation, fauna and microorganisms co-evolve and are reciprocally influenced. Ultimately, this review will suggest a better stewardship of agricultural soils as a natural capital.

Nature Communications

Aridity-driven shift in biodiversity–soil multifunctionality relationships

Bernhard Schmid

Relationships between biodiversity and multiple ecosystem functions (that is, ecosystem multifunctionality) are context-dependent. Both plant and soil microbial diversity have been reported to regulate ecosystem multifunctionality, but how their relative importance varies along environmental gradients remains poorly understood. Here, we relate plant and microbial diversity to soil multifunctionality across 130 dryland sites along a 4,000 km aridity gradient in northern China. Our results show a strong positive association between plant species richness and soil multifunctionality in less arid regions, whereas microbial diversity, in particular of fungi, is positively associated with multifunctionality in more arid regions. This shift in the relationships between plant or microbial diversity and soil multifunctionality occur at an aridity level of ∼0.8, the boundary between semiarid and arid climates, which is predicted to advance geographically ∼28% by the end of the current century...

Above- and belowground biodiversity jointly tighten the P cycle in agricultural grasslands

2021 •

Felipe Aburto

Experiments showed that biodiversity increases grassland productivity and nutrient exploitation, potentially reducing fertiliser needs. Enhancing biodiversity could improve P-use efficiency of grasslands, which is beneficial given that rock-derived P fertilisers are expected to become scarce in the future. Here, we show in a biodiversity experiment that more diverse plant communities were able to exploit P resources more completely than less diverse ones. In the agricultural grasslands that we studied, management effects either overruled or modified the driving role of plant diversity observed in the biodiversity experiment. Nevertheless, we show that greater above- (plants) and belowground (mycorrhizal fungi) biodiversity contributed to tightening the P cycle in agricultural grasslands, as reduced management intensity and the associated increased biodiversity fostered the exploitation of P resources. Our results demonstrate that promoting a high above- and belowground biodiversity ...

Land

Land Use and Management Effects on Sustainable Sugarcane-Derived Bioenergy

Glaucia Mendes Souza

Bioenergy is an important and feasible option for mitigating global warming and climate change. However, large-scale land-use change (LUC) to expand bioenergy crops, such as sugarcane, raises concerns about the potential negative environmental and socioeconomic side effects. Such effects are context-specific, and depending on the LUC scenario and management practices, several co-benefits can be attained. We reviewed the literature and discussed how LUC and best management practices affect key components of sustainability (e.g., soil health, soil carbon (C) sequestration, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions, nutrient cycling, water quality, among others) of sugarcane-derived bioenergy production in Brazil. Sugarcane expansion has occurred predominantly over pasture areas, although converting croplands could be also an environmentally feasible option. The land transition from low-productivity pastures to sugarcane cultivation seems to be a sustainable pathway to increase bioenerg...

Innovations in Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable Soil Management

Michele Pisante