Soils: Environment, Health and Society

Introduction 2 The soils of Scotland provide a wide range of environmental, economic and societal benefits. Soils carry out a range of services including underpinning the provision of food, forestry and fibre production; regulation of environmental flows of water and compounds and elements; a source and sink of environmental carbon; provision of habitats for sustaining biodiversity; preservation of cultural and archaeological heritage and provision of a platform for buildings and roads. While Scotland’s soils are generally in good health, threats including environmental change and loss of organic matter are significant and have profound effects on the ability of soils to function and provide ecosystem services. In addition, sealing of soils by construction, loss of biodiversity and deposition of acidifying and nutrient enriching air pollutants also represent significant threats to soils in Scotland. Accordingly, there is a significant body of policy in place relevant to soils, providing some direct or indirect protection of this vital resource. In this booklet we present a range of research highlights, regarding soil, which have developed through the research performed in the RESAS Programme of work 2011-2016. We present summaries in four main subject areas: 1) Soils and Food Security; 2) Soils and Environmental Security; 3) Soils and Human Health and 4) Soils and Society. This breadth of subjects and impacts demonstrates the importance of soils to future productivity, sustainability and development of societies across the world, but specifically in Scotland. In the first section we discuss the impact of how selecting the appropriate microbial community associated with plant roots (Chapter 1) and the appropriate seed traits (Chapter 2) will enhance our ability to effectively manage cropping systems to improve the productivity and environmental sustainability of agricultural practices. We present highlights of work on the production of a smartphone app which allows the user to gain instantaneous information on their soil wherever they are in Scotland (Chapter 3). We also demonstrate that better understanding of soil distribution and characteristics is allowing more effective management of forestry for multiple benefits (Chapter 4). Novel techniques for measurement of soil bulk density and the impacts of this on the ability of soils to act as a sink for atmospheric carbon are also presented (Chapter 5). Soils have many impacts on human health. For example, urban allotment soils can be a source of contaminants, while also being a valuable source of recreation (Chapter 7) and essential dietary elements (Chapter 6). Finally, we show how important soils are in society by demonstrating their key role in forensic investigations of criminal activity (Chapter 8) and as a potential engineering solution to landslide impacts on transportation networks (Chapter 9). Society also has the opportunity to interact with this wealth of information on soils through the soils website whose development is also presented (Chapter 10). The work introduced here addresses many of the key challenges to, and opportunities provided by, soils and highlights important future directions to progress this field. Tim George, Tim Daniell (James Hutton Institute) tim.george@hutton.ac.uk