SUITMA 8 - Mexico City

The 8th SUITMA conference was held in Mexico City from September 20^th till 25^th, 2015 at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). It was organized by soil scientists from the Institutes of Geology and Geography. The chairpersons were Christina Siebe, Silke Cram and Eleonora Ramírez. There were 112 participants attending the congress, coming from 18 different nations.

Along 3 conference days 10 sessions with a total of 49 oral and 74 poster presentations took place, covering the topics:

(i) soil ecological functions in urban planning and management,

(ii) urban soils and human health,

(iii) restoration and reclamation of environmental liabilities,

(iv) soil forming processes in Technosols,

(v) soil and city biodiversity,

(vi) soils as archives of settlement history,

(vii) food production in urban and peri-urban areas,

(viii) soil conservation to improve water management in urban areas,

(ix) geological hazards in urban and peri-urban areas

ABSTRACTS can be accessed HERE.

One and a half days of the conference were dedicated to field trips in the metropolitan area of megalopolis of Mexico-city. Problems such as accelerated surface sealing, land subsidence due to groundwater pollution and overexploitation, flood hazards and surface runoff regulation, wind erosion in peri-urban areas affecting air quality, waste production and disposal, rehabilitation of industrial liabilities were discussed. Soils developed out of rubble debris, saline-alkaline lake deposits, or in prehispanic floating gardens were shown, as well as soils which function as archives of more than 2000 years of settlement history within the basin of Mexico. Also examples of reforestation of environmentally strategic ravines, clean-up strategies of former industrial sites, green roofs installed by different institutions and the conservation program of ecological soil functions at the university campus were demonstrated.

Half day of the meeting was dedicated to a soil education fair, in which conference participants showed outreach activities to promote social awareness on soil ecological functions to conference participants and to children from a nearby primary school. The outreach program of the Institute of Geology named “Terramóvil” can be seen here www.geologia.unam.mx:8080/igl/index.php/terramovil.

One post conference tour showed archaeo-urban soils at the Teotihuacan archaeological site, soils of the largest wastewater irrigated area worldwide in the Mezquital valley and soils on mine waste deposits of the Guanajuato mining district in Central Mexico. Another three days tour went to the city of Xalapa, state Veracruz, east of Mexico City. Deep weathered soils formed on volcaniclastic materials were shown as well as their degradation by accelerated urban growth and deforestation, which leads to increasing landslide hazards and liquefaction processes. Preventive and remediation solutions that have been taken by the government such as contention walls or vegetation covers were demonstrated and their effectiveness discussed.