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Soil is a living archive of the Earth system

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Soil records information about past environmental and ecological conditions, yet little is known about mechanisms of memory, transmission of information across space and time, and potential consequences for ecosystem functioning. More systematic inclusion of soil memory in Earth system models can account for complex land surface responses to disturbances and changing climate.

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Fig. 1: Carriers of soil memory integrate information from the past.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil Science and Engineering, University of Maragheh, Maragheh, Iran

    Mehdi Rahmati

  2. Agrosphere Institute IBG-3, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany

    Mehdi Rahmati, Wulf Amelung, Roland Bol, Harrie-Jan Hendricks Franssen, Carsten Montzka, Jan Vanderborght & Harry Vereecken

  3. Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Dani Or

  4. Division of Hydrologic Sciences (DHS), Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, USA

    Dani Or

  5. Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES)- Soil Science and Soil Ecology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Wulf Amelung & Sara L. Bauke

  6. School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, UK

    Roland Bol

Authors
  1. Mehdi Rahmati
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  2. Dani Or
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  3. Wulf Amelung
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  4. Sara L. Bauke
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  5. Roland Bol
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  6. Harrie-Jan Hendricks Franssen
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  7. Carsten Montzka
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  8. Jan Vanderborght
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  9. Harry Vereecken
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Correspondence to Mehdi Rahmati.

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Rahmati, M., Or, D., Amelung, W. et al. Soil is a living archive of the Earth system. Nat Rev Earth Environ 4, 421–423 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-023-00454-5

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