Soil underpins Australia’s economy – yet since Europeans arrived, the natural asset has steadily been degraded. A new national plan aims to change that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Although China’s tree-planting efforts have increased carbon sequestration for climate mitigation and protected the soil from erosion, they have also led to drastic water shortages.