Soil Security Concept Research Articles

Linkages between Soil Security and One Health: implications for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Soil provides multiple and diverse functions (e.g., the provision of food and the regulation of carbon), which underpin the health of animals, humans, the environment and the planet. However, the world's soils face existential challenges. To this end, the concept of Soil Security was developed, compelled to: "maintain and improve soils worldwide so that they can continue to provide food, fiber and fresh water, contribute to energy and climate sustainability and help to maintain biodiversity and the overall protection of ecosystem goods and services." In parallel, the concept of One Health likewise works across the human-animal-environment interface, highly relevant for the goals of Soil Security. In this review, we evaluated the roles which both the Soil Security and One Health concepts have served in the literature between 2012 and 2023 and explore the potential linkages between both concepts. We outline that both concepts are used in disparate fields, despite considerable overlap in aims and objectives. We highlight the Soil Health concept as a potential connector between Soil Security and One Health. Overall, we argue that both Soil Security and One Health are highly complementary fields of scientific inquiry with solid leverage for translation into policy and practice. However, there is a need to define One Health dimensions, as has been done for Soil Security. As such, we proffer five measurable dimensions for One Health, the "5Cs"-Capacity, Condition, Capital, Connectivity and Codification-to allow for an overall measure of One Health. Finally, we advocate for a biosphere-focused framework to collectively make progress toward the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and other global existential challenges.

Soil security in floodplain and river restoration projects

Floodplains and their soils provide a vast range of ecosystem services for nature and humans. At the same time, however, these ecosystems are among the most degraded in the world. During the past decades an increased effort has been made towards the restoration of floodplains and rivers; however, in such projects, soil is often overlooked. To assess the actual status in Germany an online survey has been conducted to investigate the obstacles to soil protection from the restorer's view, and to find ways to better integrate soil protection in such projects. The results show that soil is already present in project planning and implementation, but a special focus is set on pollution. Not all aspects of the soil are equally considered, usually because of financial constraints. Besides the financial aspect, other obstacles include complicated regulations on soil protection in Germany and a lack of soil awareness. There are efficient tools to avoid harmful soil changes on construction sites like the Pedological Construction Supervision (PCS), however, this is often seen as an additional financial and organizational burden. To better integrate soil in restoration projects, a special interest lies on the connectivity component of the Soil Security concept that aims to increase soil awareness of all stakeholders. This is accompanied by planned new soil legislation on soil protection in Germany.

The 5C's of soil security guiding realization of ecosystem services in line with the UN-SDGs

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have a deadline of 2030 so, restricting attention to agriculture, development and implementation of management measures, aimed at reaching the goals, is urgent. Even though the current 159 very broad targets and 234 indicators for the SDGs don't mention soils, soils play a key role when addressing indicators 2.4.1 and 15.3.1 aimed at “sustainable agriculture” and “degraded land”, by introducing operational methods to assess soil health and interdisciplinary ecosystem services in line with the SDGs. Application of the soil security concept, combining biophysical and socioeconomic approaches, is essential for sustainability research where dominant socioeconomic considerations by stakeholders should frame the biophysical analysis. If stakeholders don't embrace SDG-inspired innovative management, nothing will materialize in the real world. Much research is still needed to address inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability issues but a plea is made at this critical point in time to also apply a relatively straightforward and pragmatic research approach, essentially based on available data and methods, to assess ecosystem services, defining indicators and thresholds, in line with five key SDGs. Reference is made to an exploratory Dutch case study in a:”Living Lab”. The National Soil Health Institute in the US has already pioneered such a pragmatic approach by first emphasizing socioeconomic aspects and by incorporating the soil health analysis in regenerative farm management that is recognized by farmers. But the five ecosystem services will still have to be assessed here to maintain the link with the SDGs and the policy arena. The 5C's of soil security apply very well at farm level. The soil science profession will benefit from showing specific examples of “Living Labs” where five thresholds of ecosystem services are met, creating: ”Lighthouses” showing examples of achieved sustainable development in which soil health plays a key role as demonstrated by specific measurements.

The role of hydropedology when aiming for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

AbstractSoil physics defines soil water, air, and temperature regimes that are crucial for agricultural production, the quality of water resources, and waste management. Positioning such activities in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will provide a valuable link to the international policy arena and should also include consideration of other SDGs dealing with climate change, biodiversity preservation, and soil health, thereby covering aspects of SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG3 (good health and wellbeing), SDG6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG13 (climate action), and SDG15 (life on land). Combined expertise of soil physicists and pedologists in hydropedology offers a basic soil package, to be completed by soil chemists and biologists, to interdisciplinary teams studying ecosystem services in line with SDGs. Soils not being isotropic and homogeneous, pedology offers descriptions of soil heterogeneity, requiring innovative measuring methods. Digital mapping significantly improves the quality of traditional soil maps by being more quantitative at lower cost. Socioeconomic conditions are important elements of sustainable development as is recognized by the soil security concept, distinguishing soil connectivity with users and soil codification, linking soil with the policy arena. The latter has been successfully achieved in South Africa. Innovative, “applied” interdisciplinary research is needed to develop operational methods, assessing ecosystem services that are relatively of low cost, simple, and transparent, allowing acceptance by critical stakeholders. Modern proximal sensing techniques offer a promising perspective. An exploratory case study of a Dutch: “Living Lab” is referred to as an example of such an “applied” interdisciplinary approach.

Spatial modeling of soil security in agricultural land of Central Java, Indonesia: A preliminary study on capability, condition, and capital dimensions

Regulations for land use monitoring in Indonesia are still centered on how to increase production as high as possible, without intensively and carefully securing the soil as a sustainable planting medium. Several approaches have been developed, and the concept of soil security which has emerged in several developed countries, is one of the alternative solutions upheaved that need to be modified to ensure soil sustainability in this tropical environment. The geographical approach using remote sensing and GIS is examined to answer the challenges of the broad and diverse characteristics of Indonesia. This study aims to identify the existing approaches related to land capability assessment for agricultural food commodities, and to be able to develop a method to quantify the soil capability, condition, and capital under the concept of soil security, in Central Java, Indonesia. Parameters used in calculating the capability include land use, rainfall, and soil properties, which are derived from various data, including remote sensing data. The result shows that Central Java has a great potential for agriculture purposes indicated by the high score of soil capability. However, the soil condition and capital status need more support from regulation to be sustainable both physically and economically. Soil security classes as a foundation to establish new regulations will comprehensively codify the importance of strengthening the security of soil and thus of food. Using freely available data, our study can be scaled up to provide a national spatial database on soil security status, and to sustain food security in the country.

The effect of social and personal norms on stated preferences for multiple soil functions: evidence from Australia and Italy

Although soil degradation has become a global phenomenon that might severely threaten the provision of a large range of ecosystem services, not much is known about the economic value of soil functions such as carbon sequestration and rainfall water infiltration. Knowing these values would be an important input into the recently developed concept of Soil Security. This paper aimed at closing this gap for a broad set of soil functions valued at the regional level in the Veneto region in Italy and New South Wales in Australia. The study not only elicits non‐market values by a choice experiment but also investigates the impact of personal norm activation and social norms on stated preferences, by a hybrid choice model with multiple latent variables. As the survey was conducted in two countries, our study offers evidence of the external validity of both social norm effects and personal norm activation. The results reveal that respondents positively value the conservation of the soil functions and that both personal norm activation and social norm clearly affect stated preferences.

Are soil phenoforms the new normal? Soil classification and soil mapping in the Anthropocene

The proposed Anthropocene epoch is characterized by intense human intervention on the soil resource. To characterize this, two concepts have been defined. Soil genoforms are the central concepts of mappable soil bodies, including permanently altered soils. These are represented by soil profiles which are the soil “individuals” of soil classification, and are based on relatively permanent soil characteristics. Soil phenoforms are persistent, but reversible, non-cyclical variants of a soil genoform with sufficient physical, chemical or biological differences to substantially affect soil functions, especially regulation and production functions. Soil phenoforms are the result of differential soil management and are directly linked to the soil security concept of soil condition. Map-unit based soil survey and classification has typically identified and mapped soil genoforms, ignoring the diversity of soil phenoforms that may be found within map units, and consequently their differential functioning. This latter is especially important in the evaluation of the soil resource with respect to the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. Developments in digital soil mapping suggest that it may be feasible to identify and map soil phenoforms in regularly-updated soil survey. This has implications for soil classification: (1) some soil genoforms as presently defined contain more than one stable soil genoform, and so should be split into several genoforms; (2) soil phenoforms should be recognized as dynamic forms within the soil classification system. An open challenge is how to identify and efficiently map soil phenoforms in regularly-updated soil survey.

Soil security as a roadmap focusing soil contributions on sustainable development agendas

Long a rather abstract concept, sustainable development has since 2015 been defined by the United Nations in terms of goals (SDGs), specified by targets and indicators.Soils play an important role in several land-related SDGs by their contribution to ecosystem services that, in turn, contribute to biomass production (SDG2), water quality (SDG6), climate mitigation (SDFG13) and biodiversity preservation (SDG15). These goals have been adopted by the European Union when defining their Green Deal. However, sustainable development will only be achieved when stakeholders adopt appropriate management measures that result in a satisfactory level of all four ecosystem services. Adoption, however, is not only a function of technical considerations but is also highly affected by socioeconomic and even psychological factors. The soil security concept that considers both: “hard”and “soft” criteria, is therefore well suited to act as a roadmap towards a sustainable future, focusing soil contributions to ecosystem services and the SDGs. A storyline is proposed starting with connectivity, defining interaction processes among all partners involved in the sustainability debate, followed by condition, and capability that can be defined by a recently proposed quantitative expression of soil health. Soil Capitol expresses soil contributions to ecosystem services in financial terms and thus contributes to connectivity when examples show that non-soil contributions are much more expensive. Environmental laws and regulations, expressed by codification, ideally link soil performance to societal relevance but the tension between individual desires and societal demands requires modern forms of connectivity in terms of willingness to: “joint-learning”, supported by modern communication theory. Following the complete storyline of the 5C's, as proposed by the soil security concept, can make future soil research much more effective from a societal and political point of view.

Application of the Soil Security Concept to Two Contrasting Soil Landscape Systems—Implications for Soil Capability and Sustainable Land Management

Soil security identifies global challenges and a series of dimensions that are necessary requirements to meet those global challenges using sustainable land management. The soil security concept is applied to two contrasting soil landscape systems with varying climate, landform and soil types. Previous methodologies for assessing land and soil capability are combined within the soil security conceptual approach. The land and soil capability methodologies are used to assess how the soil condition changes in response to the stresses and forcing associated with land management and land and soil degradation processes. It is the soil capability that defines how the soil condition changes between the reference state of the soil condition, or the genoform, and the soil condition under land use, or the phenoform. The conclusion is that soil capability, which is one of the dimensions used to apply the soil security concept, is a complex dimension and has several aspects or further facets to be considered to achieve sustainable land management. It is apparent that in assessing soil capability, the following facets are relevant. I: The capacity of the soil to provide ecosystem services to meet the global challenges outlined for Soil Security. II: The stability of the soil condition to land degradation processes resulting from the effects of land management practices and the environmental stresses on the soil. III: The capacity to recover following degradation. Facets II and III can be considered the resilience. An important conclusion is that the soil capability cannot be assessed without taking into account features of the landscape including climate and landform. Two examples from south eastern Australia of the application of these facets of soil capability to on-ground situations are presented. The Cowra Trough Red Soils in the Australian wheat belt are a set of soils, primarily contributing to meeting the global challenge of food security. The major degradation processes threatening the stability of these soils are water erosion and soil acidification. The Kosciusko National Park in the Snowy Mountains region is primarily contributing to meeting the challenges of water security for the irrigation industry in the Murray Darling Basins and energy security through the production of hydroelectricity. The set of soil landscapes also contributes to biodiversity protection and human health and well-being. The major degradation processes threatening the stability of these soils and their capacity to meet the global challenges are water and wind erosion. A major limitation is the poor capacity of these soils to recover once degraded. Identifying the main ecosystem services provided by the two examples, together with the major risks of land degradation can clarify extension, economic and policy aspects of sustainable land management for the two sets of soil landscapes. For the Cowra Trough Red Soils, management of water erosion and soil acidification are essential for maintaining the contribution of the area to food security. For the Kosciusko National Park, the control of water and wind erosion are essential to maintain the contribution of the area to water and energy security.

Soil Security in Sustainable Development

The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an excellent channel to demonstrate the significance of soils when considering e.g., food production, water availability, climate mitigation and biodiversity preservation. For environmental sciences, including soil science, the SDGs provide “a point at the horizon” for future research. Progress to achieve the SDGs by 2030 will bureaucratically be monitored by targets and indicators but questions as to how effective research should be organized remain unanswered so far. The soil security concept, based on the five Cs (capability, condition, capital, connectivity and codification) can provide a clear guideline for soil science research, defining soil functions contributing to interdisciplinary ecosystem services that, in turn, can define measures to reach SDGs. A “storyline” is proposed linking the five Cs, emphasizing connectivity that becomes increasingly important in our modern “fact-free” world. The traditional linear research model does not apply when characterizing SDGs because of many conflicting interests that don’t allow definition of specific “solutions”. But different action-perspectives can be defined as a basis for decision making, creating much needed transparency in the decision process. Soil contributions are most effective when framed in the context of soil-water-atmosphere-plant models. Proper codification, including clear and candid communication with stakeholders, is essential to link science with society, a link that needs improvement.

Mapping the transition from pre-European settlement to contemporary soil conditions in the Lower Hunter Valley, Australia

The concept of soil security has been proposed with the dimensions of capability, condition, capital, connectivity, and codification of soil. However, it remains a challenge to accurately and efficiently assess the soil's capability and condition as a function of soil change. The idea of genoform and phenoform was proposed 20 years ago and recently revitalized. Herein, we were inspired by these concepts to develop a general approach and concepts of genosoils and phenosoils for distinguishing the soil changes within soil mapping units as affected by human activities. Across a 220 km2 district with a diversity in landforms, parent materials, and land use types, we generated maps of Pre-European (soil classes that existed prior to agricultural development) soil classes using a digital soil mapping approach. Based on the land use change, Pre-European genosoils and present genosoils and phenosoils were identified and mapped within each of the Pre-European soil classes. The measured topsoil (0–10 cm) and subsoil (40–50 cm) properties have shown differences between the present genosoils and phenosoils. By objectively calculating the distances between the present genosoils and phenosoils in a principal component space using a recently published comprehensive soil classification system, several present phenosoils displayed significant differences among several soil properties (distance >8% of overall distance) and were redefined as new genosoils. The approach has successfully mapped genosoils and phenosoils within Pre-European soil classes at the district scale and identified shifts between present genosoils and phenosoils. It showed potential in detecting areas of soil changes due to human activities. Future work is required to separate seasonal fluctuations from long-term variations in NDVI and improve land use classification using remote sensing data. The method developed here can be applied in areas without remnant vegetation to separate the soil condition from capability by gauging phenosoils against genosoils.

A preliminary spatial quantification of the soil security dimensions for Tasmania

Soil Security is a holistic soil assessment approach that cogitates soil as a multi-dimensional medium. Rather than traditional single dimensional assessment approaches such as land capability mapping that largely considers only soil and landscape biophysical attributes, the Soil Security concept considers social aspects, education, policy, legislation, current land use, condition and the soils natural and economic value to society. It can identify discrete soils that are currently being used within their capacity, and areas where a use might be unsustainable, i.e. not secure. It would therefore make sense to map this concept, which aligns well with the aspirational and marketing policies of the Tasmanian Government, where increased agricultural expansion through new irrigation schemes and multiple-use State managed production forests co-exists beside pristine World Heritage conservation land, a major drawcard of the economically important tourism industry. The spatial quantification of soil security is seen as an emerging tool to effectively protect the soil resource in terms of food and water security, biodiversity maintenance and safeguarding fragile ecosystems. The recent development and application of Digital Soil Mapping and Assessment capacities in Tasmania to stimulate agricultural production and better target appropriate soil resource use has formed the foundational system that can enable the first efforts in quantifying and mapping Soil Security, in particular the five Soil Security dimensions (Capability, Condition, Capital, Codification and Connectivity). This forms a preliminary mapping product that demonstrates the feasibility of mapping the Soil Security concept. To provide a measure of overall soil security, it was necessary to separately assess the State’s three major soil uses; Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. These outputs provide an indication of where different activities are sustainable or at risk, where more soil data is needed, and develops a tool to better plan for a State requiring optimal food and fibre production, without depleting its natural soil resources and impacting the fragile ecosystems providing environmental benefits and supporting the tourism industry. The following paper demonstrates why and how we might map Soil Security, describing a preliminary approach to mapping the separate dimensions; this approach could be adapted and applied elsewhere as an evaluation tool to identify soil threats relevant to current land use, biophysical properties, policy and management, and stimulate further research and debate into developing a global Soil Security mapping methodology.

Putting Soil Security on the Policy Agenda: Need for a Familiar Framework

Soils generate agricultural, environmental, and socio-economic benefits that are vital to human life. The enormity of threats to global soil stocks raises the imperative for securing this vital resource. To contribute to the security framing and advancement of the soil security concept and discourse, this paper provides a working definition and proposes dimensions that can underpin the conceptualization of soil security. In this paper, soil security refers to safeguarding and improving the quality, quantity and functionality of soil stocks from critical and pervasive threats in order to guarantee the availability, access, and utilization of soils to sustainably generate productive goods and ecosystem services. The dimensions proposed are availability, accessibility, utilization, and stability, which are obviously similar to the dimensions of food security. Availability refers to the quality and spatial distribution of soils of a given category. Accessibility relates to the conditions or mechanisms by which actors negotiate and gain entitlements to occupy and use a given soil. Utilization deals with the use or purpose to which a given soil is put and the capacity to manage and generate optimal private and public benefits from the soil. Finally, stability refers to the governance mechanisms that safeguard and improve the first three dimensions. These dimensions, their interactions, and how they can be operationalized in a strategy to secure soils are presented and discussed.

Soil Security: Solving the Global Soil Crisis

AbstractSoil degradation is a critical and growing global problem. As the world population increases, pressure on soil also increases and the natural capital of soil faces continuing decline. International policy makers have recognized this and a range of initiatives to address it have emerged over recent years. However, a gap remains between what the science tells us about soil and its role in underpinning ecological and human sustainable development, and existing policy instruments for sustainable development. Functioning soil is necessary for ecosystem service delivery, climate change abatement, food and fiber production and fresh water storage. Yet key policy instruments and initiatives for sustainable development have under‐recognized the role of soil in addressing major challenges including food and water security, biodiversity loss, climate change and energy sustainability. Soil science has not been sufficiently translated to policy for sustainable development. Two underlying reasons for this are explored and the new concept of soil security is proposed to bridge the science–policy divide. Soil security is explored as a conceptual framework that could be used as the basis for a soil policy framework with soil carbon as an exemplar indicator.

The dimensions of soil security

Soil security, an overarching concept of soil motivated by sustainable development, is concerned with the maintenance and improvement of the global soil resource to produce food, fibre and fresh water, contribute to energy and climate sustainability, and to maintain the biodiversity and the overall protection of the ecosystem. Security is used here for soil in the same sense that it is used widely for food and water. It is argued that soil has an integral part to play in the global environmental sustainability challenges of food security, water security, energy sustainability, climate stability, biodiversity, and ecosystem service delivery. Indeed, soil has the same existential status as these issues and should be recognized and highlighted similarly. The concept of soil security is multi-dimensional. It acknowledges the five dimensions of (1) capability, (2) condition, (3) capital, (4) connectivity and (5) codification, of soil entities which encompass the social, economic and biophysical sciences and recognize policy and legal frameworks. The soil security concept is compared with the cognate, but more limited, notions of soil quality, health and protection.