Soil: The Life Supporting Skin of Earth

In 2015 the international community is celebrating the International Year of Soils. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) call of action includes: Healthy soils are for healthy life. Therefore we need to protect our soils. Our soils are at danger because of expanding cities, deforestation, unsustainable land use and management practices, pollution, overgrazing and climate change. The current rate of soil degradation threatens the capacity to meet the needs of future generations. We depend on soils. Therefore the promotion of sustainable soil and land management is central to ensuring a productive food system, improved rural livelihoods and healthy environment. As long as soils are at risk, sustainable agriculture, food security and the provision of ecosystem services are compromised.1 FAO also emphasises that we depend on soils. Healthy soils are the basis for healthy food production; Soils are the foundation for vegetation which is cultivated or managed for feed, fibre, fuel and medical productions; Soils support our planet´s biodiversity and they host a quarter of the total; Soils help to combat and adapt to climate change by playing a key role in the carbon cycle; Soils store and filter water, improving our resilience to floods and droughts; and Soil is a non-renewable resource, its preservation is essential for food security and our sustainable future. Yet soil was globally not at the top of popularity for neither research or teaching nor funding at the end of the 20th century. In the past decade, however, a push for furthering our understanding of soils has been strong in Europe and further afield. It is therefore fitting that an effort is made by an international soils research team to inform young people about the importance of soil as a natural resource. Soil is the most important natural resource after water. It takes hundreds of years to develop just a few millimetres of soil, yet it can be eroded at an instance in a flash flood. Therefore we are now seeing this important resource being degraded at an alarming rate. In writing this book we took many of the important results from our research project, which involved 15 partners in Europe, USA and China. We hope that the soil issues presented here can help both students and teachers to think in a holistic way about soil - and that many of the students will become intrigued enough to study soil science or natural resource economics and/or policy when they go to University