Soil erosion by water threatens food security, but soil conservation practices can help protect arable land. We tested a soil erosion model that simulates sediment yields in micro-scale watersheds with soil conservation in place. The model captured the very low sediment yields but showed limited accuracy on an annual time scale. However, it performed well when applied to larger areas over longer timeframes, demonstrating its suitability for strategic long-term soil conservation planning.

When glaciers retreat, new land surface is revealed. Using detailed glacial retreat maps, it is possible to determine for how long a location has been ice-free. This age is used in this study to analyse how fast carbon is incorporated into the soil. Our results show that the wetness of the soil strongly determines the CO₂ uptake and carbon incorporation rates. Wetlands cover a small percentage of the land surface but are nonetheless important for the carbon storage in the deglaciated area.

We studied how soil-building practices like cover cropping, reduced tillage, and crop diversity affect soil carbon on farms in California. We find that maintaining living plants throughout the year and reducing tillage can boost multiple forms of soil carbon with distinct functions and longevity. While soil type matters, how the land is managed often had a greater effect. This suggests that improving farming practices can meaningfully increase carbon in the soil and draw down atmospheric carbon.

We investigated how the soil degradation status of smallholder grazing, classified using remote sensing, in two districts of Western Kenya, compared with measured soil parameters at 90 sites. Grouping sites using soil data had some agreement with the remote sensing (RS) classification. Overall, our results suggest that supplementing RS methods with microbial biomass C, soil P, percent C and N, and soil pH, could enhance our ability to identify degraded soils and target restoration efforts.

Olive groves face severe soil erosion, threatening their sustainability. This study reviewed existing research to understand how and why erosion happens. By analysing data from various measurement methods, we found that erosion rates are unsustainable and that while natural factors contribute, farming practices, especially keeping soil bare, drive significant soil loss. Adding ground cover can cut soil loss by over half. This urges the adoption of soil conservation practices.

We compared soil properties and water storage capacity across these three forest types, finding that conversion from primary forests significantly reduced water retention capacity. While secondary forests exhibited better water retention than rubber plantations in shallow soil layers, they showed weaker capacity in deeper soils, with distinct seasonal variations in water storage. Soil porosity was identified as the key determining factor, with primary forests maintaining higher porosity.

The study evaluates the effect of trachyte and basalt powders on soil and maize yield in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of Cameroon. Texture, base saturation, and organic carbon indicate moderate limitations. The climate is favourable for maize cultivation. Rock powder application significantly improves yield, with basalt being more effective than trachyte. The advantage of using rock powders lies in their environmental benefits, long-term effectiveness, and more affordable cost.

This study compares the performance of different neural network architectures and a random forest model for modelling soil erosion by water at a small spatial scale in agricultural cropland. The results indicate that a complex convolutional neural network outperforms all other tested models across standard evaluation metrics. A permutation importance analysis identified the digital elevation model as the most influential predictor across all models.

The soil stoichiometric characteristics in the study area are predominantly governed by niche-microtopographic factors. Although plant life forms influence certain elements through processes such as nutrient return, their overall effect is relatively weak, and their impact is often contingent upon the microtopographic context. This combined action of biotic and abiotic factors reflects the complexity inherent in the karst soil nutrient cycling mechanism.

This study examines organic carbon (OC)–mineral interactions in permafrost soils undergoing thermokarst degradation in Cape Bounty (Melville Island, Canada). Chemically stabilized OC accounts for 13 ± 5 % as organo-metallic complexes and 6 ± 2 % as associations with iron oxides. Including physical protection, up to 64 ± 10 % of OC is mineral-protected. Deeper layers show a sharp decline in mineral-bound OC, suggesting increased vulnerability to degradation when exposed by deep thaw features.

This study introduces a novel two-level framework to address soil contamination from agrochemicals, linking degradation with ecosystem service loss and recovery. It integrates global evidence and policy insights to show how green chemistry, governance, and sustainable farming restore soil health. Highlighting soil as a socio-ecological concern, it calls for science-based global action aligned with SDGs.

This study offers a major advancement in understanding CO₂ fluxes in Sahelian agro-silvo-pastoral systems by combining continuous high-frequency automated soil chambers and Eddy Covariance methods over one year. It reveals the critical role of Faidherbia albida trees in carbon cycling and ecosystem productivity, providing rare, high-resolution data to inform climate mitigation strategies and ecosystem models in semi-arid African landscapes.

The organo-mineral assemblage formation from the mixture of crushed rocks and leaf compost was promoted by (i) microbial re-working of OM (indicated by lower C:N and higher δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N compared to the original leaf compost) and (ii) the supply of extractable metals (esp. oxalate-extractable Fe phase) from the rock weathering. These findings supported the organo-metallic glue hypothesis (Wagai et al., 2020) and suggest that C accretion during early pedogenesis.

This study demonstrates that municipal solid waste biochar (MB) is a highly effective amendment for Ni immobilization in contaminated calcareous soils, outperforming both individual and combined applications of compost and bentonite. These findings provide valuable insights for developing remediation strategies in Ni-contaminated agricultural soils, emphasizing the potential of biochar as a sustainable and efficient immobilization agent.