4 - Soil Physiology: Processes of a Dynamic Process-Oriented Soil Science

Abstract

This chapter translate Vernadsky's five functional biogeophysical characteristics of life processes into five essential physiological soil processes that themselves are tied to the 13 paired processes used in traditional soil science. The five essential soil processes may be characterized as follows: metabolic processes include the creation of new minerals and compounds (anabolic) and the weathering out of older minerals and compounds (catabolic): bringing things together and taking things apart; respiratory processes include the exchange of gasses between the soil and its environment, principally the intake of oxygen and the exhalation of carbon dioxide, ammonium, and other waste gasses; reproduction in the broad sense is the replication and creation of new soil components; internal and external information communication systems define how soil is informed about its environment and how it responds to that information; biodynamic feedback systems provide chelates, enzymes, and other catalysts for physical and structural change in various soil components. With some of these physiological processes two distinct pathways, one biotic and the other abiotic, are evident, suggesting an evolved relationship between the two dynamic systems. This combination of biotic and abiotic metabolic pathways can be conceptualized as resulting from a process similar to, and perhaps antecedent to, that of endosymbiosis in biology.