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Division 4 - The Role of Soils in Sustaining Society and the Environment - Paper Submission
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Listed below are the
Symposia for each of the Divisions, Commissions and Working Groups available
within Division 4.
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Why treat soils like dirt?
Public awareness of the importance of soil science is a continuing
problem in raising the profile of the profession. The great majority of
people are unaware of the contribution of soil knowledge to food and
fibre production, sustaining ecosystems, managing water, managing
contaminants and waste, and in engineering applications. This symposium
should be pitched at attracting an interested lay audience, e.g. urban
professionals from regional government and rural professionals involved
in regional planning, as well as science professionals, and will be an
excellent opportunity to showcase success stories in the application of
soil knowledge in providing benefits to individuals, community groups
and society at large. It will require inspirational speakers who could
give an exciting account of their experiences and put them in a broader
context, to which lay people could easily relate. It should inspire
greater interest in studying soils at tertiary institutions and through
post-experience training.
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Soils and human health: The good, the bad and the ugly
This symposium will address the impact of soil on human health in both
the urban and rural environment. Although the main focus will be on the
direct impact of soil organisms and contaminants on health, the
relationship between the specific components of raw foodstuffs and
human nutrition and health will also be addressed. This symposium will
broaden the scope of this initiative to include rural populations.
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Valuing the soil’s natural capital and its ecosystem services
Agriculture depends on the value of the soils’ natural capital. Also,
agricultural production systems both provide, and rely on, ecosystem
soil-services. Agriculture provides provisioning services, which in
turn depend on supporting and regulating services as inputs to
production. Agriculture also receives and creates ecosystem
dis-services that reduce productivity, increase production costs, or
represent costs to the environment. The flows of these services and
dis-services directly depend on how agricultural production systems are
managed, and their sustainable management requires econometric
quantification of natural capital values, and identification of the
monetary values of the services and dis-services. The goal of the
Symposium is to provide measures of how successful we are at valuing
the soil’s natural capital and its ecosystem services, and to assess
how such valuation frameworks are being used to develop policy and to
implement sustainable land-use practices.
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Soil management and the protection of receiving environments (Joint 4.3)
The earth’s soil-plant-atmosphere ecosystems are the planet’s critical
zones. Thus, understanding and managing the soil-plant-atmosphere
system is crucial, not only for our economic future, but also for the
health of our environment and the resilience of our social systems. The
impact of the changing management of our soils and the varied land-uses
of our diverse landscapes and agricultural systems, as well as the
mosaic of urban and industrial sites, is transmitted via the vadose
zone to groundwaters, and then frequently by interface reconnection to
surface waters. The land-use type and the management of our lands
determine both the quality and quantity of water in these receiving
environments. Changing land use, along with new land management
practices involving waste application, vegetation management, pesticide
and nutrient use, all influence the health and state of our surface and
groundwaters. Market exigencies, industry policies, and regulatory
controls increasingly require that management practices be verifiably
sustainable.
This Symposium will examine the approaches being used to develop
sustainable land management practices for various land uses, and how
intensification is affecting the quantity and quality of water in
receiving environments. The impact of the consumers’ increasing desire
for eco-verified land management practices will be assessed.
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Soil, energy and food security
The demands on our soil resources will continue to increase in order to
meet the food requirements of the earth’s growing population, with the
demand further amplified by increasing affluence. This situation may
be further compounded by the demand for renewable fuels. This
symposium will consider both the extent of the demand on our soils, and
the opportunities that may exist for meeting the demands of the future
while maintaining, and perhaps even enhancing, our soil resource.
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Quantity and quality of soil and water in the face of global change
Given that climate change and other changes will greatly impact our
food production, how will soil scientists respond to this grand
challenge? This symposium will provide a discussion on the challenges
facing soil scientists to provide food security locally, regionally and
globally in the face of global change. Land use changes will driven by
attempts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and will also be an
adaptive response to changes in regional climates. This topic would
best be introduced by a combination of guest climatology speakers to
indicate how climatic zones will shift and how the variability of the
climate may change (frequency of droughts, floods etc). They would be
followed by soil scientists discussing how soil and land management in
some zones will need to change in order to adapt to the changed
conditions. Finally, resource economists could be invited to predict
the impacts on food and fibre production and regional environments.
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Impacts of land-use change on soil function in unsustainable ecosystems
Land-use change is a worldwide phenomenon that encompasses a variety of
practices from clearance of native forests for agriculture to
afforestation of agricultural lands. Land use change occurs primarily
in response to actual or projected sifts in local and international
demand for food and fibre. Other drivers, such as increases in
population pressure, climate change, or carbon sequestration to
mitigate greenhouse gas emissions should also be considered. The
process of land-use change has a major impact on soil biological,
chemical and physical properties and processes, which in turn requires
the adoption of appropriate management strategies to maintain soil
quality and productivity and thereby ensure the sustainability of
managed ecosystems. The maintenance of effective and efficient soil
function in relation to land-use change is particularly important.
There is a need to collate existing knowledge on the effects of
land-use change on soil function and its associated implications for
sustainable management of the soil resource in different regions of the
world. This in turn will facilitate the development of future research
in this area.
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Delivering soils information to non-agriculture users
Range of potential users; raising awareness; benefits and costs. This
symposium will address the need for Soil Science to communicate
information to non-agricultural users.
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Attracting (young) people to a soils career – How to turn around past failures
Because fewer and fewer students are opting for science subjects at
high school and university, employers are having to take on non-science
graduates as professionals to work on urban and rural projects
involving soil and land management. This applies to all levels of
government, non-government agencies, businesses, and charitable
institutions. Hence professional development courses have become the
new way of presenting the soil knowledge that was once covered in
degree courses. Delivery mechanisms are an important area for
innovation in education, whether for school students or post-experience
professionals. Progress on projects illustrating the use of web-based
teaching resources for soils and related topics (including plant
biodiversity, remote and proximal sensing technology, GIS and
modelling) can be presented.
This symposium will address the current crisis in Soil Science
Education that includes declining enrolments and even more rapidly
declining numbers of students majoring in or earning degrees in Soil
Science (however named).
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This symposium deals with our past. It links the study of
what has happened in history, and how soils were perceived, represented and
used to help explain the past changes in different human cultures. For this
symposium, a special focus is placed on the history of biota in soil science.
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It has been said that “scientific advances do not truly
become the possession of a culture until these discoveries are expressed
through that culture’s art and poetry”. The main objective in the proposed
symposium is to present a cultural perspective on soils. Among the topics to be
considered:
• human perception of soil in ancient, indigenous, and modern
societies—their practices and religious & ethical beliefs
• depictions of soil in art, literature, and elements of popular
culture
• use of soil materials as an artistic medium
• human interactions with soil in urban landscapes/living
space, diet, war, and criminal investigations
• the role of unconscious in the perception of soils and
elaboration of scientific theories in soil science
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Enhancing soil productivity of degraded lands and mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration
Rationale: Soil degradation is a global problem of major proportion but
it is manifested more seriously in the tropical regions and especially
in developing countries. Soil degradation encompasses soil losses
through erosion, loss of soil fertility, salinization, acidification,
soil compaction and soil pollution among others.. These processes not
only deteriorate the production capacity of the soil but may also lead
to climate change through loss of organic matter and soil quality. It
is now recognised that the rate of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission can be
mitigated by transferring CO2 from the atmosphere to the terrestrial
biosphere. It is also recognised that soil carbon sequestration is the
most cost-effective and a feasible option for the first half of the
21st century until alternatives to fossil fuel take effect. This topic
represents a development strategy with high potential in tropical
regions of the world, where soil degradation is related to perpetual
food crisis and overall impoverishment. Thus carbon sequestration in
degraded lands provides a win -win strategy, by which on one hand it
improves soil productivity and biodiversity but on the other, it helps
in mitigating the climate change.
Objectives: The main objective of this symposium is to bring world
scientists together to present and discuss on multiple importance of
soil carbon sequestration in improving the productivity of degraded
lands and mitigation of climate change. Possible strategies based on
currently available technology and the legal framework on this subject
will also be addressed
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