Grand challenges in the research on soil processes

Three-dimensional distribution of water and air in soil pores: Comparison of two-phase two-relaxation-times lattice-Boltzmann and morphological model outputs with synchrotron X-ray computed tomography data

“…On a similar type of computer (typical desktop computer with two 2.6 GHz processors), running the LBM program on one of the ROIs considered earlier takes between 2 and 19 h, while exactly the same cases take about 5 min when run with MOSAIC. The considerable time savings that ensue may be extremely useful when one tries to work with larger 22 soil samples, as is very likely to be increasingly the case in years to come, in order to resolve the question of how to upscale microscopic simulations to larger scales (e.g., [8]). …”

“…Several soil microbiologists have pointed it out already for more than half a century [1]. However, not much could be done by way of a response until roughly 15 years ago, when significant technological breakthroughs allowed the geometry of the pore space in soils to be visualized, and the spatial heterogeneity of a number of chemical and mineralogical constituents of soils to be quantified at micrometric scales commensurate with fungal hyphae and even the most minute of bacteria or archaea [48,40,9,6,7,8].…”

Soil “Ecosystem” Services and Natural Capital: Critical Appraisal of Research on Uncertain Ground

“…The manifest reluctance of the soil science community to do so could be due to a number of different reasons (Baveye, 2015), among which are conceptual shortcomings with all the methods available in principle to evaluate soil services monetarily, the fact that soil functions or services are interdependent and (for some, at least) still poorly understood, or the current impossibility to assign prices meaningfully to a whole range of cultural, spiritual, or emotional services of soils. In addition, an analysis of costbenefit analysis, a pillar of neoclassical economics, which would control what is done with soils services if they were assigned prices, suggests that the management of soils that would ensue from CBA may not be in the best interest of human populations at large, not to mention that it could lead to disaster for soils themselves.…”

Organic waste recycling in agriculture and related effects on soil water retention and plant available water: a review

“…From the agricultural productivity point of view, the problem was exemplary formulated by Amundson et al (2015): "Given little opportunity or desirability for further agricultural expansion, stewardship of our existing domesticated soil is essential for sustained human prosperity". Many recent studies highlight the importance of soil organic matter (OM) with regard to climate change (Adewopo et al 2014;Amundson et al 2015;Baveye 2015;Lin 2014). Moreover, among the grand challenges in research on soil processes, also the need for modified agricultural practices in order to improve water and nutrient retention of the cropped soil layer was expressed by Baveye (2015).…”