Soil Degradation, Restoration and Management: Current Status and Future Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

As an integral part of terrestrial ecosystems, soils provide numerous ecosystem services and support ecosystem functions that include supplying essential nutrients, water, oxygen, and support for plants. Although soils are the result of natural processes, these processes are exceedingly slow and from the perspective of human lifetimes, soils need to be regarded as a non-renewable resource. Inappropriate land uses such as intense land management may critically reduce the ecosystem services and functions provided by soils and result in land degradation through processes such as erosion, sealing or pollution. A sustainable land management and the conservation and restoration of degraded ecosystems is therefore key to maintaining functional soils that can provide multiple ecosystem services.

One of the Sustainable Development Goals recognised by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly is to ‘Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss’. Moreover, the upcoming 2021–2030 decade has been declared as the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration by the UN, setting up new goals for scaling up restoration of degraded ecosystems. However, despite large international efforts in addressing these environmental challenges, further research is needed to design and develop strategies to reduce soil degradation and promote conservation and restoration of soil ecosystems.

In this Special Issue, we welcome contributions covering inter- and transdisciplinary research on soil degradation, conservation, and restoration in the context of a changing global environment through observational, theoretical, and applied studies. Topics of interest include but are not limited to 1) soil degradation by unsustainable land use and inappropriate land management practices, and 2) soil conservation measurements and restoration actions for maintaining ecosystem services and functions (including research, management, education, and policy).

Dr. Miriam Muñoz-Rojas

Prof. Paulo Pereira
Dr. Manuel Esteban Lucas-Borja

Guest Editors

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