Soil fragility: A concept to ensure a sustainable use of soils

Abstract

On the scale of human generations, the soil is a non-renewable natural resource that provides fundamental ecosystem services for life on earth. Therefore, it is necessary to develop tools that allow to recover and maintain soil functions under sustainable conditions for both, agricultural and undisturbed ecosystems. In this context, the regulation of land use to sustain the potential productivity of agroecosystems becomes essential. Until now, the assessment of the sustainability of soil resources based on their fragility had not been sufficiently studied. Furthermore, strategies to manage soil resources to avoid their degradation over time require quantifiable tools that are made available to farmers, researchers, and institutions. We believe that it is critical to develop a soil fragility index for individual agricultural and undisturbed ecosystems. In the latter case, those indices applied to the agricultural sector would allow regulating the sustainable use of soils based on their functions within ecosystems. Thus, this article proposes a new approach to evaluate the fragility of the ecosystem.