Natural soils analysis for future land use

Abstract

Sealing and degradation still characterise risky land management today. Despite intensive research, even the assessment of key components such as soil organic matter has been unsatisfactory, limiting the sustainable development of foundations of civilisation. A comparison was made between natural and cultivated soils to identify the changes caused by land use. This resulted in a more precise quantification of known relationships and the discovery of new relationships between soil components that have evolved over thousands of years without human influence and that show specific changes with land use. This opens up unexpected possibilities for indirect soil analysis. It seems possible to distinguish between natural soils and soil-like carbon-containing mineral mixtures (e.g., compost and horticultural substrates). Carbon added to soils with fresh organic residues or from anthropogenic (soot, slag) or geological (coal) sources can be distinguished from soil organic matter regardless of chemical heterogeneity. The degree of carbon sequestration in soils appears to be easy to quantify. To contribute to the preservation of soil functions and the development of sustainable land use technologies, elucidation of the causal processes involved in these relationships is desirable.