Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
written, but the ways of realization are so complicated, it does not look realistic.
Indeed, whenever and whoever tried to even start with such limits, the result was
catastrophic. Although we are not speaking about ethics, we are not qualifi ed to
enter this mined fi eld. The other way to shift the crossing point further into the
future is to increase our care and enhance our abilities to keep soils in a “healthy”
state. In other words, our duty is to fi ght against various soil illnesses and try to
prevent their appearance. However, if the principle of soil sustainability is accepted,
why do we ever so frequently introduce the magnitude of yields as the criterion for
optimal soil management? And here a new problem or question is emerging.
When we speak generally about the need to maintain biodiversity on behalf of
sustainability, why has there been no mention of taking steps to preserve pedodiver-
sity? Present-day, repetitious activities are directed to transform naturally occurring
diverse soils into a bastard domain across a fi eld using artifi cially introduced proce-
dures directed to achieve those properties approaching characteristics of fertile soils
developed under natural conditions. Is it not the time to now defi ne the boundaries
of spatial domains that limit our practical successful activity that bastardizes the
natural diversity of soils within farmers' fi elds? As authors, we did try to fi nd an
appropriate defi nition of the problem without speaking about its satisfactory solu-
tion. But independent of our attempts to answer the emerged question, the need to
fi ght against soil illnesses remains.
We have described one of several illnesses in our earlier chapters. It was and still
is the deterioration of soil structure and sometimes even a complete loss of the struc-
ture. It is related to the change of the original vegetation that was destroyed and new
plants introduced at the start of agriculture - the greatest revolution of mankind. The
major part of agricultural plants is regularly harvested and removed from cultivated
fi elds. The portion of plants remaining in each fi eld does not cover the loss of humus
due to its decay. Even the most resistant humus substances are decaying with a half-
life of several years up to about two decades. Whenever there is not enough “raw
organic matter” being returned to the soil and transformed into humus, the total
content of humus in soil decreases substantially within two or three decades that
severely degrades the soil's ability to adequately support its vegetation. This is why
new terms have been coined as anthropodegradation of soil structure or anthropo-
conversion of land forms and other terms starting with the Greek
anthropos
mean-
ing human being. The invention of new words having glimmers of science did not
solve the problem. It was already known that the loss of humus and especially of
glomalin is one of the most dangerous signs of soil deterioration, or let us say of soil
illness. The contemporaneous trend aimed at preventing this illness is to use proce-
dures that retain maximum amounts of plant remnants in the fi eld to provide sup-
plies of organic substances readily available for benefi cial, continual humifi cation.
The improvement of agricultural methods brought about another technique. It
was plowing that evolved from the primitive loosening of soil by a simple hoeing.
The hoe was gradually transformed into a soil-loosening scratch plow when animal
traction was invented. The new instrument was a vertical wooden stick fi xed to a
wooden frame that was pulled by a draft ox. The wooden stick broke up a narrow
strip of land along the direction of this “plowing” line. Since the method left a strip
