The mission of soil science in a changing world

The soil is a vital, complex, and labile medium. To manage it effectively and sustainably, we must strive to understand its attributes, functions, and environmental interactions. Toward this holistic end, we need to overcome traditional disciplinary and institutional barriers so as to promote interdisciplinary cooperation among teams of scientists with different but mutually complementary specialties. Herein, we provide an historical and cultural review of the evolving relationship between humanity and the soil.     

The frontier of soil science: Soil health

<正>Soils are a valuable resource with life activity in terrestrial ecosystem, and soil health and its sustainable management are becoming a major focus of global concern. A healthy soil is a “harmonious social system”, which should have good structure, functional state,and buffering performance to maintain the dynamic balance of soil ecosystem. Soil health has become the frontier of soil science. The development of theoretical and practical approaches for soil health evaluation and managem...     

Biogeochemical interfaces in soil: The interdisciplinary challenge for soil science

Soil, the “Earth's thin skin” serves as the delicate interface between the biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere. It is a dynamic and hierarchically organized system of various organic and inorganic constituents and organisms, the spatial structure of which defines a large, complex, and heterogeneous interface. Biogeochemical processes at soil interfaces are fundamental for the overall soil development, and they are the primary driving force for key ecosystem functions such as plant productivity and water quality. Ultimately, these processes control the fate and transport of contaminants and nutrients into the vadose zone and as such their biogeochemical cycling. The definite objective in biogeochemical‐interface research is to gain a mechanistic understanding of the architecture of these biogeochemical interfaces in soils and of the complex interplay and interdependencies of the physical, chemical, and biological processes acting at and within these dynamic interfaces in soil. The major challenges are (1) to identify the factors controlling the architecture of biogeochemical interfaces, (2) to link the processes operative at the individual molecular and/or organism scale to the phenomena active at the aggregate scale in a mechanistic way, and (3) to explain the behavior of organic chemicals in soil within a general mechanistic framework. To put this in action, integration of soil physical, chemical, and biological disciplines is mandatory. Indispensably, it requires the adaption and development of characterization and probing techniques adapted from the neighboring fields of molecular biology, analytical and computational chemistry as well as materials and nano‐sciences. To shape this field of fundamental soil research, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has granted the Priority Program “Biogeochemical Interfaces in Soil”, in which 22 individual research projects are involved.     

A soil science renaissance

The renaissance was an intellectually-rich period following a period of stasis in the medieval period. Something analogous appears to be currently taking place in soil science where novel approaches to thought are combined with a revival of ideas from the past. Renewed interest in agriculture (food, feed, fuel) and numerous publications have brought soils back onto the global research agenda. The need for up-to-date and fine resolution soil information and the revival of soil research has been highlighted and prioritised in several recent studies by the UN and other international organizations. Soil erosion, nutrient depletion and pollution are key issues that have been brought up in many recent reports - in most cases in relation to environmental degradation, climate change and world-food production. There is also an increased interest in soils in the popular press and media, and soils have entered the policy arena in many countries and several continents. We guestimate that about €3.2 billion is annually spent on soil research in Europe, North America, and some of the main countries in Asia and Oceania. For the global soil science community, there are challenges ahead to address the questions raised in these reports. There is a whole set of new techniques and methodologies in the wings waiting to take centre stage. There is a direct need to educate a new generation of soil scientists and to increase the influx of soil science students in many universities. The soil science community should benefit from the current upsurge in soil science, but the community has to deliver the goods and information that is wanted and much needed.     

Current titles in soil science

Nine extraction procedures were tried on four calcareous soils containing very low to extremely high amounts of calcium carbonate. Correlation studies relating chemically extractable zinc to both concentration in and uptake of zinc by young sorghum and maize plants grown in the greenhouse indicated that five extraction methods exhibited a high degree of correlation. When the methods were compared among themselves, the highest correlation was obtained for dithizone and EDTA-ammonium-carbonate methods. The EDTA-ammonium-carbonate method seemed to reflect the available zinc status of the soils more accurately than other methods.