Slow science

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Slow science, part of the broader slow movement, is grounded on the conviction that science should be a slow, steady, methodical process, and that scientists should not be expected to provide “quick fixes” to society’s problems [1] supporting curiosity-driven scientific research and opposes performance targets. From the Slow Science Manifesto: «We are scientists. We don’t blog. We don’t twitter. We take our time»

[1] Alleva L (2006) Taking time to savour the rewards of slow science. Nature 443, 271 | doi:10.1038/443271e

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Soil awareness raising: a key point for our future

During the International Year of Soil 2015 (IYS2015) a lot of people produced a huge amount of very good material, I mean the video clip from Soil Science Society of America, the infographics made from the FAO or the several workshops or congress made across the whole world.

Soil awareness is a broad concept, as we saw today, and is possible to do a lot of things.

We could reach 3 different target:

1.     Primary school children

2.     Teen ager

3.     Decision maker and politicians

1. Primary school children: Interact with young people is crucial for our future, educate school children is the only way to preserve the  necessary soil for the survival of humankind. It is an urgency, we don’t have the time to convince all the government to modify the official school curricula. To reach and form the educator or the environmentalist that have relationship with the local communities school could be the right way to meet (young) people that are still like a clean blackboard.

2. The teen ager are not anymore a clean blackboard, but are very sensitive to the social media communication. The use of Instagram or facebook could be the way to “stay connected” with them.

3. The decision makers and politicians are those hardest to reach, too many time they are constantly chasing the consensus in the short term. The step that we need is to try to explain to the people that interact with the soil (almost everyone!) that the soil has a value a big value, not lower than that of water and air. This is important for the local administrator that has to contain the lost of a nonrenewable resource, but is equally important for someone that have to “push up” products strictly linked to the soil (like vines…)




Souces:

http://www.fao.org/soils-2015/en/

https://www.soils.org/iys/monthly-videos

http://www.fao.org/soils-2015/resources/infographics/en/#c328551

https://www.geo.uni-hamburg.de/bodenkunde/service/publrel/pdf/miehlich-2008-soil-awareness-eurosoil-2008.pdf



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Fertile crescent

Aridisols cover half of Syria occurring where the annual rainfall falls below 250 mm, and are thus the dominant soils in the Badia, but also occur around Damascus. They are mostly characterised by Calcic or Gypsic horizons close to the soils surface, weak structure and relatively light texture, which predisposes them to erosion. Inceptisols are the second most extensive soils covering about one fourth of the country prevailing in the rainfed areas in the north and also in the areas to the east of the coastal mountains around Homs, Hama and Edleb. They are mostly characterized by Calcic horizons, heavy texture and moderate to strong structure. The remaining quarter contains young soils, Entisols over the coastal and central mountains or on river terraces in the Euphrates valley, Mollisols confined to the coastal region, and few Vertisols in the north Aleppo and the Turkish border. 

These soils, supported the rise of civilizations. 

The cradle of civilization gave rise to the first known Neolithic farming settlements which flourished thanks to the water supplies and agricultural resources available and the advancements in technology. Cereals were already grown in Syria as long as 9,000 years ago.



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TEARS

They have sown pain, death, horror. They killed fathers, mothers, sons and friends. And each of them had only one fault: that of existing and living in our world, the world that our civilization and our ancestors have built. And they made it. They made it because now we cry, they did it because now we are afraid, they did it because they left us shocked and astonished. They stopped our Friday night, they stopped the smiles, the jokes, the desire to meet and keep each other company that makes us all so similar, so brothers.
Tonight the terrorists have killed my brother, they killed my sister, that stranger who has no face, but that my own eyes, my own hands, my own heart. And these terrorists are not aliens or beings of another species. Are men reduced to beasts by their ideology, their fundamentalism, by their purifying fury. Men slaves of their hate have injured our freedom.
In the middle of those corpses, which tell something, may be more of the same terrible Nazism, what we are looking for is only love. The love that - paradoxically - the monsters of Paris have never been able to embrace.
They are so busy in their revenge, so decided to carry out their war. A war that, after this night of blood, find all of us more alone, find all of us with our backs to the wall, ruthlessly challenged to ask ourselves - without appeal - which civilizations, such as Europe, we really intend to deliver to our own children.
Freedom is not won once and for all. In every generation there is a need of an “Id” that regain and it seems to be the most important thing, the most urgent, the most real thing. The only thing truly human after all our tears, after all this our excruciating and unspeakable pain.


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Money, get away                                                                       Money, get back

The Global Soil Partnership should become an interactive, responsive and voluntary partnership, open to governments, institutions and other stakeholders at various levels. Partners by default to the GSP are the FAO member countries who determine FAOs priorities as laid out in the Strategic Framework and Programme of Work and Budget of the Organization and according to the needs and priorities identified in their countries.

These partners could come from any kind of international, regional and national institutions/organizations working on soils (Governmental Organizations, universities, civil institutions, research centers, soil science societies, UN agencies, NGOs, private companies, farmer associations, donors, etc).


Current Resource partners: European Commission (1,3 million USD), Thailand (100,000 USD), Switzerland (100,000USD) and International Fertilizers Association (58,00USD).
The European Commission has been a major supporter for the establishment of the Global Soil Partnership, in line with the EU’s Soil Thematic Strategy.  After extensive dialogue for selected activities during 2014-2015, a project proposal has been accepted in order to provide €1 million to the GSP, 0.2 eurocents each EU citizen (1.1 each Swiss citizen and 0.1 each Thai citizen)  [*]. 

And the other partners?


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Reference:
[*] source FAO

Do the right thing


The increasing desire for architects, engineers, planners, ecologists to incorporate soils in their approaches acknowledge the aboveground impacts of belowground conditions, is very positive and has potential to increase understanding of many ecological process and patterns. If these positive new approaches do not have at least a basic understanding of soil, the potential for making fundamental errors. And thus the risk of generating incorrect and unreliable information is high [1].
A soil contains life, is very reactive to chemical stress, normally compensates both chemical and physical stresses. If you apply a specific test developed for the asphalts [2], does the applicability of the results remain reliable? If you guess soil moisture by feeling and observing its appearance “As the soil approaches wilt point, it becomes lighter in color. If you’re unsure what the color should be when there is adequate moisture, add water to a small sample and compare it to the actual soil color” [3] sometimes you could falling into error.
…and if you think of increasing the culture on the soil suggesting questions like this “There are 6 major types of soil: Sandy, Clayey, Loamy, Silty, Chalky and Peaty [4]” maybe you will not get the desired result.

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References:
[1] Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 15 (2013) 237– 244 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ppees.2013.05.004
[2] Geomaterials 3, 165-171 (2013) 165-171. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/gm.2013.34021
[3] Landscape Architecture Magazine (2014) http://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2014/01/21/soils-the-measure-of-moisture-parked/
[4] http://www.playbuzz.com/ifdcvs10/whats-your-soil-iq

Urban desertification

Since the last decades a new form of desertification is becoming ever more important: the “Urban Desertification”. From the social point of view the urban desertification was long considered related to the abandonment of degraded areas [1], but the overcrowding of large areas of our planet produced a real desertification phenomena, where plants do not grow unless in pots or in marginal areas, where slums or new town are very similar as environmental function and they differ only apparently [2].

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Photograph: Google Earth/2014 Digital Globe, theguardian.com

n these areas of relative exclusion, people experience physical and economic barriers to accessing food, and in particular healthy foods [3, 4]. In EU28, the conversion of hectares of agricultural soil in the last years implied a net loss of wheat-equivalent, which accounts for the calories needed by several percent of population [5].





The soil is always the basis of the choices concerning the fight against desertification, in the broadest sense of the term.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/gallery/2015/apr/01/over-population-over-consumption-in-pictures?CMP=share_btn_link

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References:
[1] R. Wallace, 1990. Urban desertification, public health and public order: ‘planned shrinkage’, violent death, substance abuse and AIDS in the Bronx. Social Science & Medicine 37, 801–813
[2] J. Simon, 2014. Urban desertification and a phenomenology of sustainability: the case of El Paso, Texas. Interdisciplinary Environmental Review 15, 160–182. DOI> 10.1504/IER.2014.063659
[3] V. Reising, A. Hobbiss, 2000. Food deserts and how to tackle them: a study of one city’s approach. Health Education Journal 59, 137–49. doi:10.1177/001789690005900203
[4] L. Morton, T. Blanchard, 2007. Starved for access: life in rural America’s food deserts. Rural Realities (Rural Sociological Society) 1, 1–10.
[5] F. Malucelli, G. Certini, R. Scalenghe, 2014. Soil is brown gold in the Emilia-Romagna Region. Land Use Policy  39, 350–357 doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2014.01.019

Does large-scale concentrated solar power protect our soils?

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NASA image

In 1968, Giovanni Francia built the first concentrated-solar plant near Genoa, Italy. This plant had the architecture of today’s concentrated-solar plantswith a solar receiver in the center of a field of solar collectors. Today, large-scaleconcentrated solar power (CSP) is being widely commercialized and the CSPmarket has seen about 1095 megawatt (MW) global total of generating capacity. In2010, Spain took the global lead with a total of 632 MW, followed by the US with509 MW [1]. Global installed CSP-capacity has increased nearly ten fold since 2004 and grew at an average of 50 percent per year during the last five years [2].

Dr Zhiyong Wu and his colleagues appraised recently the environmental impacts of CSP plants in northwestern China [3]. They have drawn the following conclusions:

(I) Land use is not a problem for solar energy utilisation;
(II) CSP power plants will not harm human health;
(III) CSP power plants have impacts on the wildlife and habitat.However, the impacts are temporary and not significant;
(IV) During the construction stage, the CSP power plants will result inhuge impacts on the local environment, especially the soil;
(V) Large-scale solar power plants have a detrimental impact on soil erosion during the construction phase, and beneficial impact during the operational stage;
(VI) During wintertime, the soil temperature is 0.5–4 °C higher will during the spring and summer seasons is 0.5–4 °C lower than the nearby soil.

The situation is very controversial. We can not think that this form of alternative energy is the solution to global problems, but nor can we demonize it. The soil, in some situation can even tweak benefit, particularly in aridic areas. In temperate areas, its impact is significant and the development is permitted only by the regime of subsidies practiced by some States.



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References:
[1] REN21, 2011. Renewables 2011 Global Status Report. Paris: REN21 Secretariat.
[2] REN21, 2014. Renewables 2014 Global Status Report. Paris: REN21 Secretariat.
[3] Wu Z, Hou A, Chang C, Huang X, Shi D, Wang Z, 2014. Environmental impacts of large-scale CSP plants in northwestern China. Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts 16, 2432-2441. https://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C4EM00235K

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