Soil is Life
Smithsonian Soils Exhibit “Dig It” Opens July 19th
For the last seven years, Dr. Drohan has been helping to design an exhibit on soil and society at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. This exhibit will be a wonderful way to excite people about soil and to demonstrate the importance of soil to our civilization. For example, you’re reading this now because of soil. Soil is supporting your very existence from the clothes you are wearing, to the food you are eating, the water you are drinking, the air you are breathing, to the building you are sitting in. Your life is inseparable from soil!
On July 19th of this year the exhibit “Dig It” opens !!!
For more information please see:
Taking the next step to track changing soils and protect soils important to our survival
Given the long history of protecting the various parts of nature that we have perceived to be endangered by our development activities, it is certainly reasonable to propose a formal process for recognizing natural (non-anthropogenically made) soils that are either rare or threatened. Soils, after all, are often described as the foundation of all life, and the unique structures and characteristics of various soils make them key support systems to the diversity of life on earth.
Just as we lose animal and plant species to extinction, so to are we seeing soils damaged or destroyed due to pressures from multiple anthropogenic practices; destruction which can put life at risk. Worldwide, the effects of global warming are predicted to lead to the disappearance of permafrost within 1,000 years, which would result in the extinction of a whole order of soils--gelisols, in the U.S. system of soil taxonomy, which cover approximately 8.6% of earth’s ice-free land area. Many examples throughout history also exist of civilizations rising and falling in part due to their management of soil. The best soils for food production are often ideal for building sites, and their favorable characteristics attract intensive development, often resulting in their degradation and significant economic loss.
Could soil go extinct? In the November-December 2007 (pg 4-5) CSA News Dr. Drohan and co-author, Timothy Farnham, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, make a case for protections for soil similar to what one might more commonly associate with endangered species. Read the CSA News article here (pg 4-5).
The detailed plan for the proposal can be found in The Soil Science Society of America Journal at: Drohan, P.J., and T.J. Farnham. 2006. Protecting life’s foundation: A proposal for recognizing rare and threatened soils. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 70: 2086-2096. Please contact the author for a reprint.
Our “Top ten” for why your life depends on soil
While you may never hear this on Letterman, here is our “Top ten” for why your life depends on soil.
- 10. Unless you live in a houseboat, your house is likely built on soil (even a houseboat is built from wood that came from a tree growing on soil).
- 9. Like milkshakes? Most have clay in them.
- 8. Like global warming? Then be happy that soil sequesters about 2x the amount of carbon found in all vegetation and the atmosphere combined!
- 7. Care for a beer? Not gonna happen without those plants that just happen to grow in soil.
- 6. Cotton doesn’t just come from the mall…You get a lot of your clothes from crops that grow on soil.
- 5. Ever been sick? You probably have taken an antibiotic that was derived from organisms in the soil.
- 4. Ever drink water from a well or stream? You could likely die of contaminated water if there was not soil to filter water for drinking.
- 3. Enjoy eating? You would likely starve to death if you could not eat plants that grow in soil.
- 2. Like breathing? You probably would not be breathing if there was not soil for plants to grow in that produce the oxygen keeping you alive.
- 1. Imagine a world where nothing that died decomposed…bet you REALLY like soil now!
