The Log | School News
Earth’s Soils Bear Unmistakable Footprints of Humans
Duke Soil Scientist Calls for More Global Research to Address Looming Environmental and Agricultural Challenges
The dirt under our feet is being so changed by humans that it is now appropriate to call this the “Anthropocene (or man-made) Age,” says a new worldwide overview by Nicholas School soil scientist Daniel Richter.
“With more than half of all soils on Earth now being cultivated for food crops, grazed or periodically logged for wood, how to sustain Earth’s soils is becoming a major scientific and policy issue,” says Richter, professor of soils and ecology. His paper appeared in the December issue of the research journal Soil Science.
[for more]“Society’s most important scientific questions include the future of Earth’s soil,” Richter adds. “Can soils double food production in the next few decades? Is soil exacerbating the global carbon cycle and climatic warming? How can land management improve soil’s processing of carbon, nutrients, wastes, toxins and water, all to minimize adverse effects on the environment?”
“Each of these questions require long-term observation and analysis, and we know far too little about how to answer them in much detail,” he says. “We need to work to sustain soils with a greater sense of urgency.”
As an example of the challenges, Richter says leading scientists are concerned that agriculture in Africa has so degraded regional soil fertility that the economic development of whole nations will be diminished without drastic improvements of soil management.
“If humanity is to succeed in the coming decades, we must interact much more positively with the great diversity of Earth’s soils,” his Soil Science report said. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Duke’s Center on Global Change.
Richter and his international colleagues have recently established what is described as the first global network of long-term soil experiments, a network with an extensive Web site at ltse.env.duke.edu.
The network has two objectives, he said. “The first is to bring more attention to how fundamental soil is to environmental quality, the global carbon cycle, and climate change, in addition to soil being the basis for food and fiber production.”
The second objective, emphasized in the Soil Science report, “is to strengthen and renew the world’s long-term soils research sites, because those provide our best direct observations of how soils are changing on time scales of decades.”