Tag • #soil

chevron_right

Nature destruction will cause bigger economic slump in UK than 2008 crisis, experts warn

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 05:00

Green Finance Institute report said further pollution could cut 12% off GDP by 2030s

The destruction of nature over the rest of the decade could trigger a bigger economic slump in Britain than those caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, experts have warned.

Sounding the alarm over the rising financial cost from pollution, damage to water systems, soil erosion, and threats from disease, the report by the Green Finance Institute warned that further breakdown in the UK’s natural environment could lead to a 12% loss of gross domestic product (GDP) by the 2030s.

chevron_right

There’s no such thing as a benign beef farm – so beware the ‘eco-friendly’ new film straight out of a storybook | George Monbiot

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 15 April - 07:00

A highly misleading new documentary claims soil carbon storage can redeem the livestock industry – it’s all so much ‘moo-woo’

We draw our moral lines in arbitrary places. We might believe we’re guided only by universal values and proven facts, but often we’re swayed by deep themes of which we might be unaware. In particular, we tend to associate the imagery and sensations of our earliest childhood with what is good and right. When we see something that chimes with them, we are powerfully drawn to it and attach moral value to it.

This results from a combination of two factors: finding safety and comfort in the familiar, and what psychologists call “ the primacy effect ” – the first thing we hear about a topic is the one we tend to recall and accept. These tendencies contribute to the illusory truth effect : what is familiar is judged to be true. We go to war for such illusory truths, and sacrifice our lives to them.

chevron_right

‘Solar powered vacuum cleaners’: the native plants that could clean toxic soil

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 14 April - 14:00

Indigenous groups see hope in the environmentally friendly process of bioremediation. But will cities pay attention?

It almost looked like a garden. In Taylor Yard, a former railyard near downtown Los Angeles, volunteers knelt down to tend to scrubby plants growing in neat rows under the sweltering sun.

But beneath the concrete of the 60-acre site overlooking the Los Angeles River, the soils were soaked with an assortment of hazardous heavy metals and petrochemicals like lead, cadmium, diesel, and benzene. As the volunteers worked to dig up entire plants for closer study – some with roots nearly 12ft deep – they wore protective gear and carefully avoided inhaling or touching the toxic soil. Even a brief exposure to the contaminants could cause serious health consequences.

chevron_right

Earthworm – the soil-maker, without whom we’d struggle to feed ourselves

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 12 April - 11:30

Their diggings aerate soil, recycle organic matter, boost microbial activity and support plant growth

Invertebrate of the year 2024: all hail Earth’s spineless heroes

The people have spoken and the choice of Guardian readers for the final nominee for UK invertebrate of the year is resounding: all hail Lumbricus terrestris , the common earthworm.

The common earthworm – also known as the lob worm , dew worm, nightcrawler and, in Germany, the rain worm – is the soil-maker. Without its labours, we would struggle to feed ourselves.

chevron_right

Rare truffle find in Scottish spruce forest sends fungi experts on alien species hunt

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 12 April - 11:00

Chamonixia caespitosa found during rewilding project in west Highlands while removing non-native Sitka spruce

Naturalists have found a very rare type of truffle living in a Scottish forestry plantation which is being cut down so a natural Atlantic rainforest can grow in its place.

The discovery of the globally rare fungus near Creagan in the west Highlands has thrown up a paradox: the work to remove the non-native Sitka spruce, to allow rewilding by native trees, means the truffle will be lost.

chevron_right

Which is worse for the soil—combines or dinosaurs?

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Sunday, 29 May, 2022 - 13:30 · 1 minute

Image of a sauropod in a lush environment.

Enlarge / Having this guy stomp through might mean that things would struggle to grow there afterwards. (credit: Roger Harris )

Words I did not expect to read in a scientific paper this week: "The similarity in mass and contact area between modern farm vehicles and sauropods raises the question: What was the mechanical impact of these prehistoric animals on land productivity?" The paper, from Thomas Keller and Dani Or, raises what may be a significant worry: Farm vehicles have grown over the past few decades, to the point where they may be compacting the subsurface soil where roots of crops extend. This poses a risk to agricultural productivity.

The paper then compares that compaction risk to the one posed by the largest animals to ever roam our land: sauropods.

The big crunch

We think of the ground as being solid, but gaps and channels within soil are critical to plant life, since they allow air and water to reach roots. Soil compaction, in its extreme form, gets rid of all these spaces, making the ground much less hospitable for plants. And compaction is hard to reverse; it can take decades of plant and animal activity to break up the compacted soil again and re-establish a healthy ecosystem.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

index?i=h943gOTIFWM:bsaGsuQn0PQ:V_sGLiPBpWU

index?i=h943gOTIFWM:bsaGsuQn0PQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo