Soil management

Often you can read about pollution of air or water, but not that often about pollution of the soils. Yet, there have been a lot of pollution of the soils during history. In a municipality we often work with polluted grounds and when somebody wants to build apartments or offices they must take responsibility for cleaning up the ground.

Climate changes may also release a lot of carbon stored in the soil. I saw a figure that around 70 billion tonnes of organic carbon are stored in Europe’s soils. This carbon has been stored in the soils for a very long time but may be released by the rising temperatures. The way the land and soils are managed can mean a lot for how they will emit the carbon, with following higher carbon dioxide percentage in the atmosphere. For example will longer crops rotation reduce the carbon emissions while deeper ploughing reduces diversity and earthworms, while grassy field margins will enhance soil biodiversity.