Humusica 2, article 18: Techno humus systems and global change – Greenhouse effect, soil and agriculture

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThe article is structured in six sections. A first portion is dedicated to the state of the art concerning climatic change and agriculture. Internet available IPCC maps and cartographic documents made by scientific Centres of research were used for illustrating forecasted climatic changes. In Sections 2 and 3, bibliographic evidences were collected for supporting a vegetation and soil co-evolution theory. Humus, soil and vegetation systems are presented at planet level in many synthetic maps. In Sections 4, 5 and 6 the authors discussed the human influence on the soil evolution during the Anthropocene. It appears that humans detected and used the Mull humus systems all over planet Earth for crop production and pasture. Human pressure impoverished these humus systems, which tend to evolve toward Amphi or Moder systems, losing their natural biostructure and carbon content.

TerrHum: An iOS Application for Classifying Terrestrial Humipedons and Some Considerations about Soil Classification

“…All over the world, students, researchers, forest managers may recognize humus forms, take a georeferenced photograph and send it to one of the authors of this article. Collected and checked data may help to improve published maps (Zanella et al, 2018h) or to prepare new soil and humus maps. The photographs being georeferenced, it is relatively easy to create new maps if the number of points is sufficient.…”

“…It spread to individual members when the idea came out that soil binds life and death (for many soil scientists, philosophy should remain separated from what they call “real science”, “numbers”, “mathematical evidence”, even if all of us—as living beings—are destined to die an incalculable day coming). Against all odds, however, the group remained united, but encountered very often many other difficulties, for example when the various humus forms were arranged on a global scale (Zanella et al, 2018f, 2018h). It was then necessary to introduce the concept of “humus system”, comprising ecologically and functionally similar humus forms as well as creating new systems for collecting strange, unusual or never surveyed humus forms (Zanella et al, 2018f) or for those in water (Zanella et al, 2018b, 2018c, 2018d) and in strongly anthropogenics‐shaped environments (Zanella et al, 2018l).…”