Soil is an invaluable non-renewable resource; it is home to thousands of animals, plants, other vital living organisms. The soil supports countless ecosystems and provides us with essential food and resources; it is key to sustaining all life forms on Earth.
Soil is full of millions of living organisms that interact with one another, massively impacting the soil; its formation, structure, and productivity. That said, a third of the world’s soil is degraded to varying degrees due to various reasons and factors; this threatens global food supplies, increases carbon emissions, and foreshadows mass migration.
What is healthy soil?
Soil consists of several degradable structures; such as clay, silt, and sand. They all have different vital characteristics for the life of humans and living organisms. A healthy soil is characterized by a good combination of soil structure, organic, biological and chemical content, and its ability to allow water penetrate into it.
A healthy soil is teeming with different kinds of creatures that include visible creatures, such as earthworms, insects, small vertebrates, plant roots, microscopic bacteria, algae, fungi, parasites, and other more complex life forms, such as nematodes and tiny arthropods. Nowhere else in the world is nature so densely crowded; a teaspoon of soil can contain more organisms than there are humans living on Earth.
What are the reasons of soil degradation? How does it affect life?
Soil degradation describes the effect of a decline in soil quality, and the diminishing of its capacity to support animals and plants. Soil can lose some of its physical, chemical, or biological qualities that support the web of life within it. Soil erosion is a part of soil degradation; it occurs when the topsoil and nutrients are lost either naturally, such as via wind erosion, or as a result of human activities, such as poor land management, overgrazing, construction, and forest cutting or fires.
Other reasons of soil degradation include the scraping of fertile topsoil by heavy machinery, but water and wind erosions remain major factors that impede the progress of agricultural projects and affect land productivity. For example, recent statistics calculated soil loss by wind erosion of 58–80 tons per hectare on the coast of West Africa, and the annual global soil loss was estimated at 75 billion tons, which costs the world about USD 400 billion annually.
Some reasons for losing soil productivity are also related to salinity. The salt deposits that may result from the irrigation process after water runoff lead to a significant reduction in crop production. The land loses its ability for cultivation on the long term. Soil degradation can have catastrophic effects at all levels, such as landslides, floods, desertification, an increase in pollution, mass migration, a decline in global food production, and a reduction in the amount of carbon stored in the soil. Soil degradation agents also kills millions of microorganisms that are an essential for fertile lands.
Watch this video on soil degradation and its causes:
What are the possible solutions to prevent soil degradation?
We can face the threat of soil degradation by changing several practices. These include leaving vegetation in the soil to allow nutrients to return into the land; avoiding monoculture, as much as possible, because it negatively affects nutrients in the soil; and educating farmers and companies about sustainable farming practices, to promote respect and responsibility towards nature and reduce carbon emissions. Hydroponics is also a form of soil-less farming, where seeds are grown in nutrient-rich water instead of soil; it can be, thus, relied upon as a tool of mitigating soil degradation.
References
sciencedirect.com
isric.com
hindawi.com
encyclopedia.uia.org
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