Climate Change and Soil Fertility

Abstract

Soil is essential for carrying out variety of ecosystem services and managing world food productivity. Climate, along with few others is the utmost dominating factor which determines and gives rise to formation of variety of individual soils in any given climatic area. More developed soil is found in hotter and wetter climate, whereas cooler and dried climates have less developed soil. Climate change pertains to remarkable modifications in various abiotic factors like global temperature, patterns of wind, precipitation, greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other climatic factors which take many decades or even more longer time periods to occur. Biological, physical and chemical functions of soil are hugely impacted by climatic change directly or indirectly. Precipitation, temperature, wind patterns, greenhouse gases and moisture regimes impose direct impact, whereas indirect impacts are induced by human adaptations such as crop rotation changes, irrigation, tillage practices etc. Soil is the mode of expression of plant responses to climatic conditions of a particular area. Change in climatic conditions such as rainfall, temperature etc. severely affect crop production in agricultural systems, as capability of crops to attain maturity is halted. Land degradation in the form of soil erosion, salinization, desertification etc. is a consequence of drastic climatic change. Hydrological cycle gets disturbed significantly following change in climate which ultimately degrades soil health and fertility. Elevated temperature, altered precipitation, atmospheric nitrogen deposition, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and imbalance of other greenhouse gases (GHGs) ultimately lead to global warming and impose high impacts on functions performed by soil. Hence all these factors highly influence future usage of the soil as well. Essentially, climatic change and soil fertility are deeply and inextricably connected together.KeywordsSoil fertilityClimate changeSoil propertiesSoil healthClimate change driversCarbon sequestration