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Soil provides raw materials for human use and impacts human health directly. The composition of human food reflects the nature of the soil in which it was grown. An example of soil as a source of raw material can be found in ancient ceramic production. The Maya ceramics showed traits inherited from soils and sediments used as raw material. [8]
These properties are storativity (S), specific storage (S s) and specific yield (S y). According to Groundwater, by Freeze and Cherry (1979), specific storage, [m −1], of a saturated aquifer is defined as the volume of water that a unit volume of the aquifer releases from storage under a unit decline in hydraulic head. [1]
Plants that have an underground storage organ are called geophytes in the Raunkiær plant life-form classification system. [2] [3] Storage organs often, but not always, act as perennating organs which enable plants to survive adverse conditions (such as cold, excessive heat, lack of light or drought).
Once in the soil-plant system, most nutrients are recycled through living organisms, plant and microbial residues (soil organic matter), mineral-bound forms, and the soil solution. Both living soil organisms (microbes, animals and plant roots) and soil organic matter are of critical importance to this recycling, and thereby to soil formation ...
Soil carbon storage is an important function of terrestrial ecosystems. Soil contains more carbon than plants and the atmosphere combined. [1] Understanding what maintains the soil carbon pool is important to understand the current distribution of carbon on Earth, and how it will respond to environmental change.
The type of soil and its texture is also a major determining factor in the biological soil crust's relationship with water retention and filtration. Soils with a large presence of sand (less soil and clay) have high levels of water retention in their surface levels but have limited downward movement of the water.
Soils are complex systems and their complexity resides in their heterogeneous nature: a mixture of air, water, minerals, organic compounds, and living organisms. The spatial variation, both horizontal and vertical, of all these constituents is related to soil forming agents varying from micro to macro scales. [19]
Man can deeply modify the evolution of the soils by direct and brutal action, such as clearing, abusive cuts, forest pasture, litters raking. The climax vegetation is gradually replaced and the soil modified (example: replacement of leafy tree forests by moors or pines plantations). Retrogression is often related to very old human practices.