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This module examines the principles of soil health.
The next module develops the regenerative practices for delivering better soil health.
This module examines the principles of soil health.
The next module develops the regenerative practices for delivering better soil health.
Module 1: Soil Health
20 credits
Module 1: Soil Health
20 credits
This module explores how soils work. It promotes a thorough understanding of the relations in the web of soil life, for the rest of the programme to build on. It shows how improving the biodiversity of plants, fungi, fauna, and microorganisms can produce healthier soil structures, now called ‘soil health’ This in turn benefits cycles of water, nutrients and carbon. The module evaluates improvements to soil health, and its wider impacts on the environment, particularly climate change, erosion and flooding.
Module aims:
Module aims:
To find out how soil food webs, consisting of flora, macro- and meso-fauna, fungi, and microorganisms, work so as to improve soil functions.
To identify the importance of soil health in crop growth, animal welfare, water holding and healthier diets.
To demonstrate how increasing the biodiversity of life in soils helps drive biogeochemical processes, like water, carbon and nutrient cycles, that make life on earth possible.
To produce indicators of good soil health.
To determine how improving soil health can contribute to resilience and help mitigate climate change..
Assessment: 5 x 250-word essay (5 credits), 1 x project (10 credits) 1 x 2000 word essay (10 credits), 1 x presentation (5 credits)
Soil Health
Soil Health
According to Doran and Zeiss (2000):
"Soil health is the capacity of soil to function as a living system with ecosystem and land use boundaries, to sustain plant and animal productivity, maintain or enhance water and air quality, and promote plant and animal health. "
According to Peter Trutmann, quoted in FAO (2008 The case for improving soil health), the above emphasises, a unique property of biological systems, since inert components cannot be sick or healthy; this emphasises the important role soil life and soil biology play in the maintenance of soil health.
Management of soil health thus becomes synonymous with management of the living portion of the soil to maintain essential functions of soil to sustain plant and animal productivity, maintain or enhance water and air quality, and promote plant and animal health.
What is Regenerative Agriculture? A review of scholar and practitioner definitions and descriptors
What is regenerative agriculture?
6 benefits
Reconstruction by Way of the Soil
An holistic perspective on soil architecture
Soil Life
Soil Life
RA Soil is the base - Review of studies. "we propose a provisional definition of RA as an approach to farming that uses soil conservation as the entry point to regenerate and contribute to multiple ecosystem services.". Reviewed definitions focus on environmental themes e.g. soil health and biodiversity.
Show how all the parts relate - the roots, the fungi, springtails, worms (annelid & nematode) soil mesofauns (springtails & oribatids) and bacteria work together Many soil analyses of biodiversity will mention worms, fungi and microrganism, but usually leave out mesofauna - all 14 quadrillion of them in UK soils.
We look holistically how the sceinces of physics chemistry and biology interact. Soil Food Web (my site) Me on BBC Gardeners World 2020
Soil Functions
Soil Functions
Creatures and microorganisms work together to provide 3 main functions of soil life 1. Keep plants healthy - roots, nutrients, mycorrhiza, glomalin. 2. Build soil aggregates - how organic and minerals mix to make crucial structures. Soil Aggregates
3. Ensure Humification - how creatures & microorganisms work together (geosmin) to break down debris to chemical nutrients
Indicators
Indicators
Main functions of healthy soil life
Main functions of healthy soil life
Showing the inetrconnectedness of life beneath our feet, but also why it is important to look at the whole - as without any part, it does not 'work' The plants, fungi, mesofauna, worms and bacteria work together to make sure the soil works at:
Keeping plants healthy. Roots need water and nutrients to pass up the plant to keep it erect and fed, in exchange for energy coming down from sun through to roots. The extar solar energ drives life underground, and it is the plants wot do it. Fungi - mycorrhiza grow from roots - using glomalin to push on, vastly extending the surface area of trees (NOT all plants, certainly not brassicas and annual plants). The fungi and roots come together when springtails - eg. onychurids, accidentally pass fungal spores, stuck on themselves, to the roots where they nibble sloughed off root materials along with fungal debris. Bees of soil to spread fungal spores which otherwise difficult to move around in those conditions. Fungi transport water too Routes to roots
Building Aggregates. Crucial mix of springtails chewin & pooin mixing clay particles together with sticky glomalin to create micro-aggregates, and then oribatids chew n poo to build up macro-aggregates (different orders of magnitude 10-100 - 1000X larger) by wrapping up smaller aggregates with larger minerals, bigger lumps of debris and with fungal mycelia holding them together. Different sorts of aggregates based on original soil minerals. Aggregates provide pores - essential spaces for life and for holding water - but also for smaller creatures to hide from larger predators like mesotigmatid mites.
Ensuring Humification. After worms do heavy shiftin and shittin, bacteria break down smaller lumps of debris further. Bacteria can signal to each other they have a nice pore in an aggregate. Springtails detect this smell (that smell of the earth - geosmin- after rain) to find them eat them and then shit them somewhere else, hence spreading them. Birds of soil. So again they provide means for bacteria spores to disperse in otherwise difficult conditions..no wind. The end poo products provide plant nutrient and help build aggregates. Nutrient cycle
"Assessing the health of soil through biodiversity and bio-indicators.
CONCLUSIONS The study showed that biodiversity levels remained constant for the plots treated with manure and farmyard compost. A reduction in biodiversity was observed in the plots treated with sewage sludge together with a slight increase in the concentration of heavy metals and dioxins. The relationship between soil health, soil biodiversity, climate, soil type, land use and the levels of contaminants can only addressed through a multi-disciplinary approach. Further work is required to establish European standards to measure soil biodiversity. For more information on the Bio-Bio Project, please contact roberto.cenci@jrc.it
Links
Links
Keep soil alive, Protect soil biodiversity
@FAO report 'State of Knowledge of Soil Biodiversity' 4th DEC
UKSoils org - 'the single source for all things soil'
Unherd 'How to save British farming'
What is regenerative agriculture?
Regenerative Agriculture - what it actually means
What do you know about soil? Quiz
Science behind Soil friendly farming & Importance of Soil Health GWCT
Agroecology in motion Seeking new agreements
Wild Pollinator Farm Health Check
A chance to break the vicious circle
Viticulture "Some grape growers are committed to regenerating the land and protecting native species—and they hope wine drinkers will be willing to support their efforts. "
Soil bacteria may play role in climate change bigger than previously thought
Soil and Health Albert Howard
Cant talk about Regenerative farming without talking about pesticides
Chinese Soil Observatories Joint UK-Chinese project. "Sinking deep boreholes – down to 200m in places – enabled us to catalogue how much carbon was stored, the diversity of soil biology and the flow of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers that leach into the environment.
Soil Loss sacrificing Amercan Heritage
It is estimated that more than 75 billion tonnes of fertile soil are lost yearly due to desertification, soil erosion and soil degradation. Holt-Giménez, Can We Feed the World Without Destroying It? p3
Soil life & land use
Soil life & land use
For every four small soil animals under trees, only half that number are found under pasture, as there are shorter roots and less mycorrhizal fungi. Soil web evolved with trees around 350mya. Grasses much later around 50mya. For all those soil animals under pasture, there are only half in arable soils. Arable soils have only existed for about 10,000 years. Ploughing exposes soil animals, breaks aggregates thus cutting down their pore spaces to live in. The plants grown are usually annuals & monocultures, so fertilisers used to make up for the loss of food & herbicides get rid of weeds, so no help. Details Countryside Survey 2006-7
Join Global Soilbiodiversity Initiative
Grazing Livestock on winter cereals improves soil biology
Agronomie "Soil organic matter, biota and aggregation in temperate and tropical soils - Effects of no-tillage"
“Soil health” is defined as “the vitality of a soil in sustaining the socio-ecological functions of its enfolding land” following Janzen, Janzen, and Gregorich (2021), but see Baveye (2021) for a critical analysis of soil health definitions. For example, implementing zero-till farming, in conjunction with crop residue mulching and cover cropping, has been found to enhance topsoil health (Knapp & van der Heijden, 2018). Improving soil organic carbon content has also been identified conceptually to enrich soil biodiversity and human health (Wall, Nielsen, & Six, 2015), as well as increase drought resilience through enhancing green water supply (i.e., the water stored in soil and available for plant uptake) in the root zone (Marasco et al., 2012; Sposito, 2013). Transformative advancements in soil biology have demonstrated that maintaining soil organic carbon content is critical to the rhizosphere microbiome (Berendsen, Pieterse, & Bakker, 2012), which, in turn, has been shown to drive plant productivity in agroecosystems. For example, Wei et al. (2015) showed that resident soil bacterial communities can significantly reduce the invasion success of pathogens into host plants. From Sustainable futures rooted in Soil Science.
Soil Health Action Plan (SHAPE) announced by government
Rebecca Pow: "The Action Plan will include the development of a healthy soil indicator, soil structure monitoring methodology and a soil health monitoring scheme to help land managers and farmers track the health of our soil over time and the impact of their management practices."
EU opens up consultation on posible Soil Health Law "The EU Soil Strategy for 2030 adopted on 17 November 2021, sets the vision to have all soils in healthy condition by 2050 and to make protection, sustainable use and restoration of soils the norm. It also announces that the Commission will table a new legislative proposal on soil health providing a comprehensive legal framework for soil protection granting it the same level of protection that exists for water, the marine environment and air in the EU." Rememebr the UK refused to include soil targets like for water and air in its new environmental law.
British Society of Soil Science 2021 Conference 'Soil Health'
British Society of Soil Science 2021 Conference 'Soil Health'
Introduction & Professor Jim Harris, Elizabeth Stockdale, Professor Dr. Matthias C. Rillig
Dr Felicity Crotty Dr Rattan Lal Panel Discussion (40+min)
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