Moving toward data on soil change

摘要

In the news feature "Rare earth" (7 November 2014, p. 692), M. Tennesen reports that soil scientists are focused on documenting and preserving soil diversity. However, the central challenge is not simply identifying endangered soils, but understanding, documenting, and responding to all soil change. The U.N. Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils' forthcoming report (7), mentioned in Tennesen's article, aims to document global soil change and its impact on soil and ecosystem function and service delivery. This effort is challenging, given the lack of data documenting decadal soil change. A single survey identifying endangered soils is of intellectual and scientific interest, but focusing resources on delineating rare soil boundaries, at increasing resolution, could be a distraction when we lack data on regional and global soil change resulting from climate and land use.