Chapter 8 - Can geodiversity help to save the soil archives?
Introduction
Palaeosols, soils that are no longer influenced by active soil-forming processes, are windows on the past: they contain information about landscape development, soil diversity and cultural heritage. Palaeosols are fossil soils that have been buried by volcanic, aeolian, colluvial, glacial, anthropogenic or other depositional processes (Chaopricha and Marín-Spiotta, 2014). They play an important role in the reconstruction of past, long- and short-term soil-forming processes, and they reflect former climatic conditions, parent material, topographic conditions, levels of organic activity (Jenny, 1994) and human activities (Richter, 2007). Often, most palaeosols contain important scientific and cultural information, not only about pedogenic processes, but also on the geomorphological development of former landscapes, including land use and land cover changes. They are part of the ‘soil archive’ and reflect past environmental and societal conditions. Deciphering soil archives is facilitated by new analytical techniques such as optical stimulated luminescence dating of sand (Chapter 4), phytolith analysis (Chapter 7) and biomarkers of palaeosols (Chapter 5), in parallel with traditional soil analysis techniques such as soil micromorphology (Chapter 1), soil pollen analysis (Chapter 2) and radiocarbon dating (Chapter 3). These techniques substantially improve our knowledge of the soil archive and open up new ways to quantify soil diversity, landscape dynamics, spatiotemporal patterns of soil loss and past human–soil interactions. The soil studies described in previous chapters emphasize the human impact on soil loss rates and the contribution of historic land use to building the soil archive.
The soil archive includes the past and present soils in the landscape, but can also comprise a collection of stored soil specimens, aiming to provide facilities and protocols for conserving the long-term scientific value of soil specimens and associated soil data (Karssies and Wilson, 2015). Without protection, the natural soil archives in a landscape are exposed to natural degradation processes or threatened by land use and land cover changes. The cultural heritage value, stored in palaeosols, could be irreversibly lost.
A major challenge in the conservation of palaeosols is that their spatial distribution is largely unknown. A reason is that palaeosols are inadequately developed in the current soil classification systems (Krasilnikov and García Calderón, 2006): soil scientists categorize the current soil types based on recent soil-forming processes and neglect buried palaeosols. Soil classification systems in general focus on the actual soil and ignore the polycyclic dimension. In contrast to descriptions of geological key localities of litho- and biostratigraphic importance, which are protected worldwide, descriptions of key soil profiles and related collections of soil samples are mainly managed by national soil surveys. For example, the Australian national soil archive (National Soil Archive, 2019) stores >75,000 soil samples, taken from 9500 sites in Australia. This archive is saved behind ‘closed doors’ and a digital counterpart is accessible through the Australian Soil Resource Information System (Australian Soil Resource Information System, 2019). In addition to physically stored soil profile samples and profiles, digital global repositories exist, such as the SoilGrids database (Hengl et al., 2014), the Harmonized World Soil Database (Fischer et al., 2008), the ISRIC-WISE Global Soil Profile data soil database (Batjes, 2009) and, for Europe, the LUCAS system (Orgiazzi et al., 2018).
Fortunately, the current anthropogenic pressures and soil conditions may be manipulated to slow down soil loss threats and thus promote preservation (Davidson and Wilson, 2006). Therefore the distribution of valuable soils should be known to ensure that efficient legislation can promote, support and secure the soil archive in the landscape for future generations. However, implementation of such legislation is challenging because it involves complex trade-offs between the cultural, provisioning, supporting and regulating services that the soil provides. The contribution of actively forming soils to economic sectors such as agriculture, forestry and mineral extraction sometimes hampers the adoption of legislation that aims to protect the soil archive. This emphasizes the need for science-based, transparent and widely applicable strategies for the identification, mapping and monitoring of soil erosion-prone areas, which may serve as input to support soil conservation initiatives from local to national and global scales. The distribution and intensity of soil erosion should ideally be monitored in a transferable, transparent and repeatable way, based on consistent indicators for soil degradation in the context of the landscape.
While the conservation of palaeosols is still in its infancy, palaeosols are sometimes indirectly protected by measures aimed at protecting the bio- and geodiversity in landscapes. Soil, including palaeosols, is one of the components of geodiversity. Viewing palaeosols in the wider context of geodiversity might facilitate the conservation of these archives of human–environment interactions. The key question we aim to address in this final chapter is how palaeosols and the soil archive can be preserved. To address this question, we adopt a landscape approach and view the protection of palaeosols in the wider context of geodiversity and geoheritage conservation. We present examples of the relationships between soils and geodiversity and give an overview of major threats to soils and palaeosols. Finally, using the European Union as a case study, we highlight policy measures to support sustainable use and management of soils.
Section snippets
Soils are part of nature's diversity
Nature's diversity can be divided into biodiversity, which is not further discussed here, and geodiversity. While nature conservation policies still mainly emphasize the conservation of biodiversity (Gordon et al., 2017), geodiversity is increasingly seen as a useful concept in nature conservation (Hjort et al., 2015). We here define geodiversity, geoheritage and geoconservation:
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Geodiversity is the natural range (diversity) of geological (rocks, minerals, fossils), geomorphological (landform,
Soil formation in natural and cultural systems
Soils form the foundation of human societies (Montgomery, 2007), because they shape the conditions for agriculture and human settlement. The relation between society and soils is two directional: people also modify the soil to suit their needs. Therefore soils should not only be viewed as the outcome of geophysical and bioclimatic processes, but as co-produced by human–environment interactions in the past and present (Fig. 8.3.1). This section will review soil-forming factors and the erosion
Threats to soils and palaeosols as elements of geodiversity
Soils are a component of geodiversity and threats to geodiversity also pose a threat to soils. The main threats to geodiversity are listed in Table 8.4.1, along with a set of indicators that can be used to monitor changes in the status of geodiversity. Urban expansion, deforestation, agricultural practices, water use and mining activities put pressure on ecosystems’ landscapes and soils and the services they provide.
To efficiently protect soil heritage (Fig. 8.3.1), it is crucial to gain an
Soil conservation
Recently, it has been recognized by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) that land degradation is a major environmental problem that affects natural and cultivated socio-ecosystems, with negative consequences for the well-being of least 3.2 billion people (IPBES, 2018). Land degradation, especially soil degradation, is a complex issue, which is influenced by many external processes and disturbances that affect the physical, chemical and
Examples of historic and contemporary cultural soil systems
In previous chapters, multiple well-illustrated examples of plaggen soils and palaeosols in the Netherlands have been presented. Here, we show examples of two contrasting historical landscapes with different ecosystem services and functions, and highlight how soils have been co-produced by human and natural processes. The first is a high-montane area in western Austria that has been transformed from a traditional grassland/pasture landscape into an environment for skiing and recreational use.
Conservation of soils
The history of human–soil interactions goes back several millennia. Soil conservation strategies have been implemented in traditional agriculture since prehistoric times (Denevan, 1995) to prevent soil loss. The construction of agricultural terraces is an example of a soil conservation practice that was already used at least 4000 years ago to prevent soil loss (Dotterweich, 2013). From the end of the 18th century onward, scholars started focusing their efforts on soil conservation (Dotterweich,
Concluding remarks and outlook
Soils are part of geodiversity and the product of soil-forming processes in past and contemporary cultural systems. People have modified soils for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. Both the rate and the spatial scale of human activities on the soil have substantially increased. Landscapes have been modified by historical and contemporaneous agricultural and cultural systems, which is reflected in soil diversity and the soil archives stored in palaeosols. It should be realized that
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Geodiversity of proglacial areas and implications for geosystem services: A review
2023, GeomorphologyCitation Excerpt :Considering the specific role of proglacial lakes as elements of disconnection (not only with respect to sediment delivery; Carrivick and Tweed, 2021), Tweed and Carrivick (2015) highlight their role in influencing colonisation by both humans and animals. The dynamics of proglacial areas, including the variations discussed above and the related sediment connectivity issues, have important effects on the development of the soil (Seijmonsbergen et al., 2019), which in turn plays a supporting role in habitat provision and biodiversity (Geitner et al., 2019). Even if the importance of soil diversity, generally defined as the variation of soil properties (usually characterised by soil classes) within an area has been demonstrated (Ibáñez et al., 1995; Mc Bratney, 1995; Mc Bratney and Minasny, 2007; Costantini et al., 2013), it is rarely considered in geodiversity studies (Ibáñez et al., 2019).
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