Stepping on invisible land: on the importance to communicate the value of soils

Abstract

Soils play fundamental roles in the functioning of the Earth's ecosystems. Despite numerous initiatives to protect soils, it continues to be generally perceived as dirt or, at best, the surface we walk on. To better understand soil perception by the public, we conducted a survey with 99 participants from Poland and Brazil. We applied an opportunity sampling and conducted semi-structured interviews with 40 respondents from Poland and 30 from Brazil, and 29 unstructured interviews in Brazil. Most of the respondents (53%) of the semi-structured interviews associated soil with the surface where plants grow while 27% said that it is the ground we step on. When asked about pro-environmental campaigns, none of the respondents pointed to soil-related initiative. Most of the respondents (99%) claimed that there is a need to increase the knowledge about the importance of soils, mostly through education (30%). The majority of the respondents of the unstructured interviews in Brazil indicated provision services provided by soils and pointed to the need for youth engagement on soil communication, corroborating the results from the semi-structured interviews. To address this, present the results on artistic workshops as an experimental model for teaching and dissemination. We present two short documentary movies presenting the results from unstructured interviews and the artistic workshops which can be used as data gathering tool, teaching tool and for dissemination purposes. This paper not only presents primary data on the crucial problem of soil recognition but also presents a range of transdisciplinary approaches to help problem solving.