We have started to address this issue because the application of wetting agents is very widespread within the European Union and is often considered desirable because it increases the effectiveness of pesticides. While pesticides are thoroughly tested for their impact on the environment as a whole, testing for the effects of wetting agents is minimal. Today, there is no research on their impact on the soil environment.

Our study focuses on (E) pyriminobac-methyl (EPM), a weedicide commonly applied to agricultural soils in China, which can potentially pose serious risks to groundwater quality once it percolates through the soil. We tested the adsorption–desorption, degradation, and leaching of this compound in five agricultural soils sampled from different provinces in China.

The Andes region is prone to natural hazards due to its steep topography and climatic variability. Anthropogenic activities further exacerbate environmental hazards and risks. This systematic review synthesizes the knowledge on the effectiveness of nature-based solutions. Conservation of natural vegetation and implementation of soil and water conservation measures had significant and positive effects on soil erosion mitigation and topsoil organic carbon concentrations.

This study found that the influence of argan trees on soil properties in southern Morocco is mostly limited to the area covered by the tree crown. However, the tree influences the bare soil outside the crown positively in specific directions because wind and water can move litter and soil particles from under the tree to the areas between the trees. These findings, based on soil samples around argan trees, could help structure reforestation measures.

This study demonstrates the usability of fallout radionuclides ²³⁹Pu and ²⁴⁰Pu as a tool to assess soil degradation processes in tropical Africa, which is particularly valuable in regions with limited infrastructure and challenging monitoring conditions for landscape-scale soil degradation monitoring. The study shows no indication of soil redistribution in forest sites but substantial soil redistribution in cropland (sedimentation >40 cm in 55 years) with high variability.

Land use changes are an important anthropogenic perturbation that can cause soil degradation, but the impacts of land conversion from growing cereals to vegetables have received little attention. Using a combination of soil analyses from paired sites and data from farmer surveys, we found significant soil degradation in intensive vegetable cropping under paddy rice–oilseed rape rotation in southwestern China. This study may alert others to the potential land degradation in the subtropics.

Pollution of French soils by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), known as carcinogenic pollutants, was quantified in this work using an extended data set of 2154 soils sampled across France. The map of PAH concentrations in French soils revealed strong trends in regions with heavy industries and around cities. The PAH signatures indicated the influence of PAH emissions in Europe during the industrial revolution. Health risks posed by PAHs in soils were low but need to be considered.

Long-term conservation tillage results in more complex and heterogeneous activities of soil organisms relative to conventional tillage. This study used an energetic food web modelling approach to calculate the mineralized N delivered by the whole soil community assemblages and highlighted the essential role of soil food web complexity in coupling N mineralization and soybean yield after a 14-year application of conservation tillage in a black soil of Northeast China.

Soil redistribution by water and tillage erosion processes on arable land is a major threat to sustainable use of soil resources. We unravel the role of tillage and water erosion from fallout radionuclide (239+240Pu) activities in a ground moraine landscape. Our results show that tillage erosion dominates soil redistribution processes and has a major impact on the hydrological and sedimentological connectivity, which started before the onset of highly mechanised farming since the 1960s.

The long-term evolution of soil organic carbon in an olive orchard (planted in 1856) was evaluated and compared to an adjacent undisturbed natural area. Total soil organic carbon in the top 40 cm of the soil in the orchard was reduced to 25 % of that in the undisturbed area. The deposition downslope in the orchard of sediment coming from the eroded upslope area did not increase the accumulation of organic carbon in soil, but it quadrupled available phosphorus and improved overall soil quality.

This paper is original research done in north-western Tunisia; it presents the impacts of the topography (slope and aspect) and the land use systems in the SOC storage in a Mediterranean area. It provides a soil spectral library, describes the variation of SOC under different conditions, and highlights the positive impact of agroforestry as good management in improving the SOC. Therefore this finding is very important to support decision making and inform sustainable land management in Tunisia.

Subsoil compaction is an important soil threat. It is caused by heavy machines used in agriculture. The aim of this study was to estimate how large the area with overcompacted subsoils is in the Netherlands. This was done by selecting locations randomly and determining the porosity and bulk density of the soil at these locations. It appeared that 43 % of the soils in the Netherlands is overcompacted, and so we conclude that subsoil compaction is indeed a serious problem in the Netherlands.

Soil aggregate stability and POM occlusion are integral markers for soil quality. Besides physico-chemical interactions, biofilms are considered to aggregate primary particles, but experimental proof is still missing. In our experiment, soil aggregate samples were treated with biofilm degrading enzymes and showed a reduced POM occlusion and an increased bacteria DNA release compared with untreated samples. Thus, biofilms are assumed to be an important factor of POM occlusion in soil aggregates.

Biodiversity indices for spontaneous grass cover were measured in two olive orchards in southern Spain with contrasting site conditions and management to evaluate their potential for biodiversity metrics of soil degradation. Biodiversity indices were relatively high for agricultural areas. No correlation between the biodiversity indicators and soil quality features were observed. The mere use of vegetation presence as a proxy might mask relative intense soil degradation processes.

Plant roots are crucial in soil erosion control. Moreover, some species respond to nutrient-rich patches by lateral root proliferation. At the soil surface dense mats of roots may block soil pores thereby limiting infiltration, enhancing runoff; whereas at depth local increases in shear strength may reinforce soils at the shear plane. This review considers the potential of manipulating plant roots to control erosion.

- We present SF3M, a new graphical user interface for implementing a complete 3-D photo-reconstruction workflow based on freely available software, in combination with a low-cost survey design for the reconstruction of a several-hundred-metres-long gully network. - This methodology implied using inexpensive means, little manpower, in a short time span, being a promising tool for gully erosion evaluation in scenarios with demanding budget and time constraints and reduced operator expertise.

Despite gullies having been intensively studied in the past decades, there is no general consensus on such basic aspects as the correct determination of the geometry (width and depth) of these erosion features. Therefore, a measurement protocol is proposed to characterize the geometry of a gully by its effective width and effective depth, which, together with its length, would permit the definition of the equivalent prismatic gully (EPG); this would facilitate the comparison between gullies.

Earthworks carried out before planting a new vineyard caused, in the surface soil layer, an increase in lime and a decline in soil OC and N contents, along with a reduction in the abundance and diversity of microbial and mesofauna communities. Five years after the new vineyard establishment, soil was still far from its original quality and this limited vine development. The reduced OM input resulting from the management and the poor residue biomass was a major factor in delaying soil resilience.