Contents page 1 — How is the soil? Page 2 — Broken, poisoned, error-nourishes or over-salt page 3 — What helps make the floors? Page 4 — We know little about the earthly cosmos as a System On a page to read
Dirty air, plastic in the sea and the mountains of garbage, the environmental problems are, to read about the just a lot. But what of the ground beneath our feet? How is it the millions of organisms that live in the earth? The condition of the soil is important for the future of our agriculture and nature. THE TIME has summed up, how is it with you:
What we know
Around a third of grazing land and a quarter of the arable and forest soils have already been severely compromised. Every year, 10 million hectares of Farmland worldwide is lost – the area of 15 million football fields. You turn into a barren Wasteland, suitable for the production of food. Soils are desert, or they will be concreted over with roads, Parking lots and buildings. In Germany alone, every day, around 60 hectares of forest and agricultural area to settlement and traffic areas.
This shrinkage, warns Maria Flachsbarth, parliamentary state Secretary in the Federal Ministry of development, aggravating one of the greatest tasks of mankind: to feed the world’s growing population.
“Pedosphere” call the experts, those skin of the crust of the earth: the sphere of our feet. It is the source of all life, moreover, a switching Central of the terrestrial water budget, and, more recently, it is considered to be Central in the fight against climate change. The soils of the earth bring everything together. They combine Rock and atmosphere, air and water, space and time, life and death.
The basic substance of each soil is mineral. Rock is weathered and breaks up into fragments; their particles mingle with newly formed minerals. Depending on the grain size of various soil develop ways: In the sound of the individual grains measuring not more than 0.002 millimeters; the bigger they are in the silt; and sand grains have a diameter of up to two millimeters. In addition, the Humus, consisting of all of the dead organic matter of the soil from dead plants and animals inherit. Only by Humus soil can be fertile.
billions of Survivalists working in the interior of the earth skin constantly, all the Dead to life. The resurrection is rooting the work of restless beings: microbes and fungi, termites, spiders, woodlice, larvae, and mice, to breathe, to hunt or to eat – and you all to digest.
This article dates back to the TIME no 06/2019. Here you can read the entire issue.
if you imagine this recycling operation, alone the Numbers are dizzy: On a forest area of one hectare in size, i.e., a square with a hundred meters edge length, it does not keep count 15 tons of multicellular animals, the food cycle going (mammals and birds). And in a single cubic metre of a Million of lashes to transform animal cells, as well as many nematodes, hundreds of millions of algae, hundreds of billions of mushrooms, 30 trillion bacteria every crumb of organic material into inorganic plant food to The digestive power of this micro-cosmos creates those nutrients, the Grass to Grow.
organic Superstar in the underground of the earthworm. There are approximately 7000 species, 46 of them in German soil. Up to eight metres deep, the earthworm burrows its passages for water and air. Under one square metre of a Meadow he can build Tunnels with a total length of one Kilometer. Plants, it is easier to throw out roots into the so loosened soil. Where you live also of nutrient-rich soil crumbs, the excretions of the worm.
One-half is arable, one-third of the forest
Germany divided according to the area, the different types of use
source: Federal Statistical office 2017
fungi occupy advantage of the fertilized mazes. To build networks of filament threads, which in turn connect the substrate to form a stable fabric. The individual species rely on symbioses. In the fungi about the fungi benefit to the roots of organic plant material and return the favor for each of the carbohydrate supply with nitrogen and phosphates. Sometimes you disgust also pests and diseases. In a major report on the microbes of the world, the Pedosphere, the Academy of American micro-raves biologists: “Under our feet, countless most lively discussions.”
