Written by: Rishi Raval
Edited by: Kiya Tavascia
Designed by: Rashiqa Ali
Published by: Rayna Almas
What is Soil?
Soil is one of the many important elements to living. It’s made up of many natural elements like water, air and more. When we think of plants and animals one of their key survival paths comes from soil because soil helps grow plants and that provides food for animals and other plants. Without soil humanity and biodiversity would collapse.
Different types of soils?
Different types of soils? You may be wondering, Yes! It’s very fascinating that there are different types of soils
- Sandy Soil (Low in nutrients)
- Loams Soil (Mixtures of sand, silt and clay)
- Peat Soil (high in moisture and organic matter)
- Chalky Soils ( heavy or light and very alkaline)
- Slit Soils ( fertile, compacted easily and light moisture)
- Clay soils ( high nutrients and are heavy)
All these types of soils have many more differences like size, utilities, identifications and more but they all have one crucial thing alike. They all provide for plants in different ways.
Nutrient cycling
The nutrient cycling is a process in which 10 different micro and macro elements and 3 non mineral elements are involved in. It starts off with the plants taking soil nutrients for them to grow and then animals will eat them and get transferred the nutrients. Once the animals die the decomposer organisms will break it to go down which then leads to the nutrients being back into the soil which will re-create the “Nutrient Cycling” process again.
The 13 elements used in the process.
Benefits of soil
There are plenty of advantages environmental benefits for soil like the protection of heatwaves mostly in cities, the regulation of preventing flooding, carbon storing in addition to filtration and transformation of nutrients and containment to water, a quarter of the world’s biodiversity is in soil which makes it a great host and lastly 95% of our nourishments is from soil. These 6 reasons solely give so much value to soil which we should be grateful for and also a reason i mentioned previously about how soil also helps the living organisms of animals so it helps the entire environment globally.
Disadvantages of soils
As much as beneficiality soil is to everyone there are also some disadvantages to it. Due to the fact that people like farmers mostly who buy soil sometimes put in a lot which can cause erosions and washing it away. In addition to that farmers keep using more which can damage the important soil nutrients which we need for our food. Whenever a variant of eutrophication except with soil happens it can cause poor maintenance to drains causing them to be clogged due to the compact feature of soil that comes together.
Closing
So that’s everything about soil that you need to know all the crucial things that are needed for the knowledge of soil!