Reshaping How We Think about Soil Security

Abstract

The soil security framework has been conceptualized and views soil as a resource that needs to be secured to avoid or minimize adverse environmental/anthropogenic impacts and undesirable consequences for people. Our critical literature review suggests that measurements, estimations, simulations, or digital mapping of soil properties fall short in assessing soil security and health. Instead, soil security that considers soil ecosystem functionality based on regionalized and optimized relationships between targeted functions and site-specific soil environmental conditions allows for the discernment of actual and attainable efficiency levels for observation sites. We discuss the pros and cons that undergird the paradigm shift toward a pedo-econometric modeling approach. Such a multiperspectival approach to soil security allows for simultaneous interpretations from economic, pedogenic, agronomic, environmental, biotic/habitat, and other perspectives. This approach is demonstrated by modeling total nutrient efficiencies in complex multi-use soilscapes with diverging soil environmental interests and concerns.