Farm vehicles approaching weights of sauropods exceed safe mechanical limits for soil functioning

Abstract

Significance Mechanization has transformed agriculture over the past century, greatly improving crop production efficiency. However, the higher capacity has resulted in increased farm vehicle weights. We show that while machinery design maintains constant surface contact stresses, an insidious and largely overlooked threat of subsoil compaction has developed. We demonstrate that modern vehicles induce high soil stresses that now exceed critical mechanical thresholds for many arable soils, inducing chronic soil compaction in root zones below tillage depths and adversely affecting soil functioning. We draw parallels between modern farm vehicles and the heaviest animals that walked Earth: sauropods. We hypothesize that these prehistoric giants may have induced subsoil compaction, thus presenting a paradox for productivity of the land that supported them.