Not all types of ground are the same and understanding how varied ground types react to environmental stresses is key to achieving true sustainability.
Rock dust is only part of the story of soil. Living creatures, many of them too tiny to see, keep that soil healthy for growing everything from food to forests.
Climate change complicates plant choices and care. Early flowering and late freezes can kill flowers like these magnolia blossoms.
Matt Kasson
The US Department of Agriculture has updated its plant hardiness zone map, which shows where various plants will grow across the country. Gardeners should take note.
Ulladulla Local Aboriginal Land Council and Mane Collective
What does fire management do to soils? We compared prescribed burning to cultural burning and looked at how soil properties changed after fire. Cultural burning was better.
Water from the Mackenzie River, seen from a satellite, carries silt and nutrients from land to the Arctic Ocean.
Jesse Allen/NASA Earth Observatory
Travis Drake, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich; Johan Six, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and Matti Barthel, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
The Ruki River supplies dissolved carbon from forest vegetation and soils to the Congo River.
Here’s why a healthy balance of microbes is important for astronauts when they travel to Mars and beyond.
The combined impact of increasing temperatures (2 to 8°C by 2100) and forest development in the mixed boreal forest could modify the growth and distribution of temperate species.
(Shutterstock)
Maxence Soubeyrand, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT) and Fabio Gennaretti, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT)
Research shows that the distribution of temperate hardwoods (sugar maple, red maple and yellow birch) could be shifting northward, which would have serious consequences for the boreal forest.
With the help of the microbes that once played an essential role in keeping you alive, the building blocks of your body go on to become a part of other living things.
From policies to support carbon farming, to setting up local ‘soil museums’, governments need to do much more to protect the soil we rely on for growing food and a healthier life on Earth.