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"Explain the causes of soil degradation. Discuss the environmental and socioeconomic consequences of this process, together with management strategies."

Soil Terminology

Terms and definitions for this unit can be found by clicking on the picture above.

Video Critique

I enjoyed watching is video because it is very informative with lots of facts and useful information about soil. Because the video is just facts, it helps in emphasising the importance of soil and how much threat it is in. Some useful facts that are stated in the video are that:

  • There are more microorganisms in one tablespoon of fertile soil than there are people on earth

  • 33% of our global soils are degraded

  • Every year soil the size of costa rica is lost (50,000 km2)

  • In Europe 11 hectares of soils are sealed under expanding cities every hour

  • 95% of our food comes from soil

  • sustainable management could produce 58% more food

  • It can take up to 1,000 years to produce 1 cm of soil

Video 2

I found this video very interesting because it not only talks about soil but also about how it relates to climate change, making it useful for our class. It stresses the importance of carbon in the world, especially since everything is made up of carbon, and how we have used up all the carbon in fossil fuels, unbalancing the carbon cycle causing climate change. I didn’t know a lot about the carbon cycle before this and how it relates to climate change, so I liked how the video talks about it. The video also talks about how soil can be a solution to climate change, and how we should be putting the carbon into the soil and not the air. Before I only knew about how soil contributes to the production of food, but now I know that it can also  be a solution to climate change, making the value of soil even greater.

Key points:

  • Since plants absorb carbon during photosynthesis, then creating glucose for the plant as well as the microorganism that make the soil and carbon can also be stored in soil. 

  • Humans have released 880 giga tons of carbon into the atmosphere 

  • The oceans have been absorbing the carbon causing acidification of the waters leading to mass extinction of many fish 

  • Compost can help absorb more carbon into the soil 

  • Not tilling, planning tree, covered crops, planned grazing all contribute to stabilising the carbon cycle and helping soil observe the carbon 

  • Process known as carbon farming, regenerative agriculture 

  • More carbon in the ground = healthy soil 

  • Stabilizing the carbon cycle can help the regeneration of soil, which is much needed as seen in the first video because of all the soil we are already losing  

Soil Degradation

Here are the different types of soil degradation that we had to learn about, and in groups of five or less we shared our slideshows. Click on the pictures above to see the different presentations

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