Soil health is the capacity of the soil to provide an environment for optimum growth and development of plants, while also ensuring the health of animals and humans. Animal manure has been used for centuries as a source of nutrients in agriculture. H...
The aim of the paper is to give an overview on the chemistry of soil organic carbon (SOC) affecting nutrient availability, the emission of greenhouse gases and detoxifying harmful substances in soil. Humic substances represent the stable part of SOC,...
Soil health is a term used to describe the general state or quality of soil, and in an agroecosystem, soil health can be defined as the ability of the soil to respond to agricultural practices in a way that sustainably supports both agricultural prod...
Land degradation, particularly soil erosion, is currently a major challenge for Nepal. With a high rate of population growth, subsistence-based rural economy, and increasingly intense rainfall events in the monsoon season, Nepal is prone to several f...
This review article aims to acknowledge the multifaceted functions of soil, and given its status as the largest terrestrial carbon store, to reaffirm its previously established importance in carbon sequestration. The article outlines the key variable...
Intensive agriculture causes land degradation and other environmental problems, such as pollution, soil erosion, fertility loss, biodiversity decline, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which exacerbate climate change. Sustainable agricultural pract...
Sorption of chemicals onto soil particle surfaces is an important process controlling their availability for uptake by organisms and loss from soils to ground and surface waters. The mechanisms of chemical sorption are inner- and outer-sphere adsorpt...
Heavy metal(loid)s and organic contaminants are two major groups of pollutants in soils. The fate and exposure of such pollutants in soil depends on their chemical properties, speciation, and soil properties. Soil properties and processes that contro...
Most of our terrestrial carbon (C) storage occurs in soils as organic C derived from living organisms. Therefore, the fate of soil organic C (SOC) in response to changes in climate, land use, and management is of great concern. Here we provide a unif...
This review highlights the potential of vermicompost and its derived products as sustainable and eco-friendly solutions for enhancing production and pest management in grain crops. It assesses their impact comprehensively on crops such as maize, whea...
Plastic is an anthropogenic, ubiquitous and persistent contaminant accumulating in our environment. The consequences of the presence of plastics for soils, including soil biota and the processes they drive, are largely unknown. This is particularly t...
Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) is emerging as a rapid and cost-effective alternative to routine laboratory analysis for many soil properties. However, it has primarily been applied in project-specific contexts. Here, we provide an assessment...
The continuous cropping (CC) of major agricultural, horticultural, and industrial crops is an established practice worldwide, though it has significant soil health-related concerns. However, a combined review of the effects of CC on soil health indic...
It has become common practice in soil applications of biochar to use ground and/or sieved material to reduce particle size and so enhance mixing and surface contact between soils and char particles. Smaller particle sizes of biochars have been sugges...
Soil salinity is a serious problem facing many countries globally, especially those with semi-arid and arid climates. Soil salinity can have negative influences on soil microbial activity as well as many chemical and physical soil processes, all of w...
Biochar application to soil has been proposed as a means for reducing soil greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate change. The effects, however, of interactions between biochar, moisture and temperature on soil CO2 and N2O emissions, remain p...
Irrigation practices can greatly influence greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because of their control on soil microbial activity and substrate supply. However, the effects of different irrigation management practices, such as flood irrigations versus re...
Repeated applications of phosphorus (P) fertilizers result in the buildup of P in soil (commonly known as legacy P), a large fraction of which is not immediately available for plant use. Long-term applications and accumulations of soil P is an ineffi...
Selenium is an essential micronutrient required for the health of humans and lower plants, but its importance for higher plants is still being investigated. The biological functions of Se related to human health revolve around its presence in 25 know...
In the past decade soil health has been intensively studied as a science and practiced as a means to help improve the global social, environmental, and economic sustainability. This paper reviews the recent advances of the scientific soil health syst...
Chars intended for use as soil amendment (“biochars”) vary greatly in their chemical and physical properties. In the present study, 19 Canadian temperate wood feedstocks were charred across a range of pyrolysis temperatures from 300&ndash...
Amending soil with biochar is a promising approach to persistently improve soil health and promote crop growth. The efficacy of soil biochar amendment, however, is soil specific, biochar dependent, and influenced by the biochar application programs....
Soil inorganic carbon (SIC), a potential carbon sink especially in arid and semi-arid environments, contributes to soil development, landscape stability, carbon (C) sequestration, and global C dynamics but due to the lack of SIC scientific reporting...
Soil fertility must be viewed as a dynamic concept that involves the constant cycling of nutrients between organic and inorganic forms. In this context, it refers also to supply adequate amounts of water and aeration for plant growth. Soil fertility...
Precise soil moisture prediction is important for water management and logistics of on-farm operations. However, soil moisture is affected by various soil, crop, and meteorological factors, and it is difficult to establish ideal mathematical models f...
Of all terrestrial ecosystems, peatlands store carbon most effectively in long-term scales of millennia. However, many peatlands have been drained for peat extraction or agricultural use. This converts peatlands from sinks to sources of carbon, causi...
The study of soil viruses, though not new, has languished relative to the study of marine viruses. This is particularly due to challenges associated with separating virions from harboring soils. Generally, three approaches to analyzing soil viruses h...
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the global food supply chain and exacerbated the problem of food and nutritional insecurity. Here we outline soil strategies to strengthen local food production systems, enhance their resilience, and create a circu...
Reclamation of salt-affected soil has been identified by the FAO as being critical to meet the needs to increase agricultural productivity. This paper reviews commonly used reclamation methods for salt-affected soils, and provides critical identifier...
There is an intense and continuous growth of the world population living in cities. This increase in population means an increase in car traffic, an increase in new constructions and an increase in the production of waste that translates into an inte...
Grapevine cane and stalks were considered for pyrolysis at 400 to 700 °C to produce biochar for increasing the water holding capacity of vineyard soil. Feedstocks were pyrolysed using a continuous feed reactor and the resulting biochars characterized...
The digital twin concept has found widespread application across diverse industries. Herein, we present a comprehensive conceptual framework for the cognitive soil digital twin, which embodies the intricate physical reality of the soil ecosystem, aid...
Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) are an environmentally persistent group of chemicals that can pose an imminent threat to human health through groundwater and surface water contamination. In this review, we evaluate the subsurface beh...
Cadmium (Cd) is a heavy metal present in atmosphere, rocks, sediments, and soils without a known role in plants. It is relatively mobile and can easily enter from soil into groundwater and contaminate the food chain. Its presence in food in excess am...
Aluminum (Al) oxides are important adsorbents for phosphate in soils and sediments, and significantly limit Phosphate (P) mobility and bioavailability, but the speciation of surface-adsorbed phosphate on Al oxides remains poorly understood. Here, pho...
The presence of microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) in soils is becoming pervasive in most agroecosystems. The recent estimates suggest that the soil burden of MNPs in the agroecosystems is more than 0.5 megatons (Mt) annually. In all the agroecosy...
Phosphite (Phi)-containing products are marketed for their antifungal and nutritional value. Substantial evidence of the anti-fungal properties of Phi on a wide variety of plants has been documented. Although Phi is readily absorbed by plant leaves a...
Iron plaque on rice roots represents a sink and source of iron in paddy fields. However, the extent of iron plaque in impacting paddy field iron cycling is not yet fully deciphered. Here, we followed iron plaque formation during plant growth in labor...
The metabolic activity of water-limited ecosystems is strongly linked to the timing and magnitude of precipitation pulses that can trigger disproportionately high (i.e., hot-moments) ecosystem CO2 fluxes. We analyzed over 2-years of continuous measur...
Mechanisms of protecting soil carbon (C) are still poorly understood despite growing needs to predict and manage the changes in soil C or organic matter (OM) under anticipated climate change. A fundamental question is how the submicron-scale interact...
Soils from humid forests undergo spatial and temporal variations in moisture and oxygen (O2) in response to rainfall, and induce changes in iron (Fe) and carbon (C) biogeochemistry. We hypothesized that high rainfall periods stimulate Fe and C cyclin...
A body of emerging research shows the promise of charcoal soil amendments (“biochars”) in restoring fertility in degraded agricultural and forest soils. “Sustainable biochars” derived from locally produced waste biomass and pr...
The escalating risks of drought and salinization due to climate change and anthropogenic activities are a major global concern. Rhizobium–legume (herb or tree) symbiosis is proposed as an ideal solution for improving soil fertility and rehabili...
Digital soil maps can be used to depict the ability of soil to fulfill certain functions. Digital maps offer reliable information that can be used in spatial planning programs. Several broad types of data mining approaches through Digital Soil Mappin...
The migration of heavy metals and radionuclides is interrelated, and this study focusses on the interaction and complex influence of various toxicants. The rehabilitation of radioactively contaminated territories has a complex character and is based...
A common technique to quantitatively estimate P speciation in soil samples is to apply linear combination fitting (LCF) to normalized P K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectra. Despite the rapid growth of such applications, the un...
Healthy soils provide the foundation for sustainable agriculture. However, soil health degradation has been a significant challenge for agricultural sustainability and environmental quality in water-limited environments, such as arid and semi-arid re...
Phytomining (PM) is defined as the process of using plants capable of bio-extracting metals from soil in order to explore them economically. This relatively new, innovative method has been gathering significant attention in both the academic and comm...
The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an excellent channel to demonstrate the significance of soils when considering e.g., food production, water availability, climate mitigation and biodiversity preservation. For envir...
Perchlorate (ClO4−) is globally enriched in Martian regolith at levels commonly toxic to plants. Consequently, perchlorate in Martian regolith presents an obstacle to developing agriculture on Mars. Here, we assess the effect of perchlorate at differ...
