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Research

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• At Wageningen University in the Netherlands, scientists are coding an app that will allow farmers in countries as far away as China to compare soil quality with their smartphones. The platform will allow food producers in similar climates abroad to assess the long-term impact of these farming techniques and the merits of applying them to their own land.

•  German scientists have conducted the first investigation into the physical and biological effects of microplastic particles on the soil and its microbes. Mircoplastics are changing environmental conditions for microbes.

•  What soil organisms do matters not only in the top layers of the soil. Half of the world's soil carbon is stored below 20 cm, and what happens to it depends on the microbes’ energy access, with consequences for negative feedback loops as the climate changes.

• Changes in climate affect macroporosity of soils, limiting their resilience to erosion and making them more prone to flooding

• A new project is using a Critical Zone approach to study the impact of climate change on biogeochemistry in soil, and their impact on hydrology. This project is really recognising the earth- and Earth-shaping power of soil organisms!

• Soil can act as a living filter and capture antibiotics and other difficult pollutants from wastewater

• Plants ‘actively cultivate’ root soil microbiota; new insights into the rhizophagy (root-eating) cycle, with the inevitable promises of re-designing soil microbial ecosystems for the benefit of human agriculture

• A new species of blind swamp eel is the newly discovered member of the soil macrofauna!

• Put soils at the heart of food systems to make them resilient to climate change – couldn’t agree more, although the actual findings of the project are much less upbeat than the title of the article would suggest

• New research into biochar production for agricultural use combines waste paper and biogas digestate to replace synthetic fertiliser, a promising circular economy project

• Climate change may make heavy metals and other pollutants more mobile in soil and between soils and other media

• Preventing conflict by focusing on land: an interesting report with rich case studies  

• Some interesting insights into ‘microbial dark matter’, or uncultured microbes – also dominant in soils

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Soils in the news

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• North Dakota is known for its crops, but farmers’ land is being poisoned by oil-drilling related salt water

• A huge project of soil analysis and mapping is underway in Ireland. The results will be available free of charge and will “describe the quality of Irish soils to inform how this resource is managed to improve the sustainability of Irish agriculture”

• IBM have released an app which measures amounts of certain chemicals in soil and water samples

• The flood-battered north Kerala district of Wayanad is experiencing a strange phenomenon -- mass death of earthworms in many parts of the hilly district known for its rich biodiversity and spice cultivation. Thousands of earthworms are emerging from the soil and perishing everyday, according to farmers and local residents

• Sand mining from rivers is depriving deltas of sediment they need to maintain themselves, putting fertile and highly populated low-lying areas in danger of flooding. Sediment being mined as sand and gravel for use in construction projects, and lost to dams – an unexpected impact of expanding infrastructures in growing Asian economies 

• Working with worms to produce fertiliser on site – vermiculture practices in Kenya

• Moving soil across the border: Rwandan farmers are accused of moving fertile soil from Uganda’s protected forest across the border to fertilise their gardens

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Policy and social movemements

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• In Brazil, a promising state-sponsored programme of dryland ecosystem restoration seems to be having significant success. “Each URAD initiative to recover a watershed is built on a fully integrated environmental, social and economic intervention. Environmental interventions aim to manage and conserve soil, recover spring water, preserve biological diversity and create the conditions that will make the area useful for food production.”

• The EU cannot afford to ignore its soils any longer, says European Academies' Science Advisory Council - calling for better farming advisory services, and for soil sustainability indicators to be part of the revised Common Agricultural Policy

• New legislation to safeguard against soil pollution comes into effect in China

 

Editorials, blogs and opinion

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• An excellent long read on landscape and ecological restoration as the way to re-inhabit the Earth: and the role of soils capturing carbon in this. A hopeful note: “humans are also a keystone species, and can help nature recover orders of magnitude faster than nature would recover on its own.”

• Healthy Soil Can Suppress Plant Pests, to a Point: I enjoyed this piece as, although it is directed at a general audience, it does not shy away from the complexities of what a ‘healthy soil’ is, and has some nice promissory narratives around microbial soil science

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Resources

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• Kew Royal Botanic Gardens have just issued the beautiful and informative report on the state of the world’s fungi

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