Next time you’re outdoors, in a park or anywhere where there is no pavement, look down at the patch of earth beneath your feet. To many people, it’s just mud, dirt, or maybe soil, something passive that things grow in. But to a soil scientist, that handful of soil represents a dynamic ecosystem that supports …[Read More]
food security
Can we mend our Earth, one gully at a time? New research reveals that the answer is YES!
Imagine losing your land – little by little – to deep, destructive trenches carved by rain and flowing water. This is what gully erosion does, a problem that has been devastating several communities worldwide. Ethiopia’s Aba Bora Watershed, the subject area of a recent study published in the EGU open access journal, SOIL, is located …[Read More]
Seaweed: an unlikely but promising food solution in nuclear winter?
A few weeks ago, at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly EGU23, a group of researchers from different disciplines briefed the media about the impact of war on the oceans, sands, and people. Among them, Florian Ulrich Jehn’s presentation stood out for its rather unlikely proposition: that seaweed appeared to be a promising candidate as …[Read More]
Geosciences Column: The World’s soils are under threat
An increasing global population means that we are more dependant than ever on soils. Soils are crucial to securing our future supplies of water, food, as well as aiding adaptation to climate change and sustaining the planet’s biosphere; yet with the decrease in human labour dedicated to working the land, never have we been more …[Read More]