Soil and landscape

Soil is the part of the landscape that is less easily observed because it is below the surface. There exist however strong relations between the landscape that we see and the soil below. These relations exist because soil and landscape are affected by the same processes, and also because soils and landscape influence each other. Researchers try to understand these relations by asking questions like “how did this soil-landscape develop and what processes were (are) the most important” and “what is the human impact on the soil-landscape and how can we manage the landscape to perform optimally and sustainably”. Research on soil-landscape processes may cover time scales of many thousands of years, but may also focus on the human time scale, often in the context of climate change and related human activities