Assessing Soil-like Materials for Ecosystem Services Provided by Constructed Technosols

Abstract

Urbanization results to a wide spread of Technosols. Various materials are used for Technosols’ construction with a limited attention to their ecosystem services or disservices. The research focuses on the integral assessment of soil-like materials used for Technosols’ construction in Moscow megalopolis from the ecosystem services’ perspective. Four groups of materials (valley peats, sediments, cultural layers, and commercial manufactured soil mixtures) were assessed based on the indicators, which are integral, informative, and cost-effective. Microbial respiration, C-availability, specific respiration, community level physiological profile, and Shannon’ diversity index in the materials were compared to the natural reference to assess and rank the ecosystem services and disservices. The assessment showed that sediments and low-peat mixtures (≤30% of peat in total volume) had a considerably higher capacity to provide C-sequestration, climate regulation and functional diversity services compared to peats and high-peat mixtures. Urban cultural layers provided ecosystem disservices due to pollution by potentially toxic elements and health risks from the pathogenic fungi. Mixtures comprising from the sediments with minor (≤30%) peat addition would have a high potential to increase C-sequestration and to enrich microbial functional diversity. Their implementation in urban landscaping will reduce management costs and increase sustainability of urban soils and ecosystem.

Creating ecologically sound buildings by integrating ecology, architecture and computational design

“…Charzyński et al, 2018). As many urban soils differ in key physical properties from natural soils, our knowledge of the functional role of urban soils is still low, and this is particularly true for artificially constructed technosols on green roofs (Ivashchenko et al, 2021; Ondoño et al, 2014; Panico et al, 2019). More research is needed to understand how urban soils, and artificial substrates in particular, affect plant and animal communities, and how urban soils and substrates develop in response to animal, plant and microbial activity. Feedbacks between the biotic and abiotic components : the community of organisms living on the building will affect the physical structures created by humans, as the growth of plants or the excrements of animals will potentially affect the building materials.…”

Assessment of the Health of Soils Contaminated with Ag, Bi, Tl, and Te by the Intensity of Microbiological Activity

“…At the same time, the scale and degree of soil pollution by them are increasing every year. Thousands of tons of organic and mineral raw materials contaminated with heavy metals regularly enter the environment [13].…”