Soil underpins Australia’s economy – yet since Europeans arrived, the natural asset has steadily been degraded. A new national plan aims to change that.
Scientists need to know how much we can rely on the land to offset our emissions.
Longleaf pines support one another through mycorrhizae – mutually beneficial relationships between certain fungi and the trees’ roots.
Justin Meissen/Flickr
We may think of plants as passive life forms, but they can cooperate, share resources, send one another warnings, and distance themselves from their communities when survival depends on it.
Giant old trees in the rainforest at Campement de Kloto, Missahoe, Agomé in Togo, West Africa.
Getty Images
Large areas targeted for forest restoration in Africa are covered by savanna and grassland, which provide important ecosystem services that would be lost should they be converted to forests.
Weathering of rocks like these basalt formations in Idaho triggers chemical processes that remove carbon dioxide from the air.
Matthew Dillon/Flickr
To avoid global warming on a catastrophic scale, nations need to reduce emissions and find ways to pull carbon from the air. One promising solution: spreading rock dust on farm fields.
Entomologist Brian Lovett examines flea beetle-infested potatoes in Morgantown, West Virginia.
Matt Kasson
The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted interest in home gardening. Three scientists who garden explain some basic methods for controlling common insects and microbes that can spoil your crop.
Compost awaiting distribution at the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District’s Rancho Las Virgenes compost facility, Calabasas, Calif.
Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Turning food scraps and yard trimmings into compost improves soil, making it easier for people to grow their own food. City composting programs spread those benefits more widely.
Corn stover (stalks, leaves and cobs) left behind after harvesting becomes a mulch and cover crop for soybeans on a Tennessee farm.
Lance Cheung, USDA
There’s growing interest in making the US food system more resilient and flexible, but soil – the origin of nearly everything we eat – is often left out of the picture.
The predatory flatworm Obama nungara travelled in potted plants from Argentina to Europe, where it’s distrupting soil ecosystems. Now, citizen-scientists are helping map their distribution.
Planting cover crops, like this red clover in Sussex County, Delaware, can help return carbon to farm fields.
Michele Dorsey Walfred/Flickr
Storing more carbon in soil helps slow climate change and makes croplands more productive. But there are two kinds of soil carbon that are both important, but function very differently.