Soil fertility
The soil fertility as a category of soil science is a complex expression for all plant growth and biomass production affecting mineralogical, physical, chemical and biological soil properties and processes. It is a measure of the effectiveness of the effect of the other growth factors at the location of a plant, such as relief, climate, water and all agricultural and plant cultivation measures. Soil fertility also includes the soil properties that determine the type, intensity and time (duration) of the material transport into the lying area below the effective root penetration depth (off-site environmental pollution).
Soil fertility management
Knowledge of constant, unstable and variable performance-limiting soil properties allows statements to be made about yield security and weather-related yield fluctuations. They are a prerequisite for the development of a management system to maintain, increase and utilize soil fertility as well as site-appropriate and environmentally compatible land use.
Methods of analysis of soil fertility
Mineralogical, morphological, micromorphological, geohydraulic and soil mechanical, hydrological and micrometeorological investigation methods and processes as well as material transport simulations in the unsaturated and saturated zone are used to determine ranges of values for soil fertility properties ( indicator system ).
Genesis of the ecological functions of soils
Soil fertility is a concept of soil science , regardless of its complexity, its position in a scheme of the partial complex-related process structures of biomass formation and according to the goal, object and methods of the investigations. It does not refer to the overall biomass production factors at the growing site.
According to the synecological (= taking into account all environmental factors) research approach , the position and importance of the soil as part of a biogeocenosis or at the level of the ecosystem are examined. That means: flora and fauna - understood as "partners" of the soil - are included in the analysis. The results of the analysis are on the one hand an effective soil fertility and on the other hand a potential soil fertility that can be viewed as an ideal state.
The relationships between climate and soil fertility, the climate-dependent genesis and dynamics of the properties that determine soil fertility, are subjects of agro-meteorology .
There are commercial substances such as fertilizers for soil improvement . There are a variety of countermeasures that counteract the salinization of the soil and the loss of soil fertility. For example, in the Canadian city of Greater Sudbury, sacks of lime were sacked to make the soil fertile again, which had resembled a lunar landscape due to the decades of acid rain . In agriculture, several methods, such as crop rotation , are known to improve soil fertility. In addition, thermal processes (for example steaming (floor disinfection) with superheated steam ) are used to rehabilitate diseased floors and to revive them by releasing blocked nutrients.
See also
- Soil ecology
- Soil protection
- Soil appraisal
- Soil yield
- Crop production
- acid rain
- environmental Protection
- Zaï