Soil functions

Soil functions are useful capabilities of soils in environment that are important for humans. Many authors (DETR, 2001 and Blum, 1993) agree that there are six key soil functions:

• Food and other biomass production;
• Environmental Interaction: storage, filtering, and transformation;
• Biological habitat and gene pool;
• Source of raw materials;
• Physical and cultural heritage;
• Platform for man-made structures: buildings, highways;

Mapping soil functions - soil functions can also be mapped as any soil properties. In this case, the key objective is to offer an interpretation of soil properties given a specific soil use context: agricultural productivity, environmental protection, civil engineering needs etc. A typical example is a map showing pollution of soils by heavy-metals or a map of soil (runoff-water) erosion risk. Compare with digital soil map that shows only the original soil properties without interpretations. Mapping of soil function is an extension of digital soil mapping because we use maps of original soil properties together with auxiliary information and soil-models (including pedo-transfer functions and soil inference models) to infer about the specific performances of soils.

See also: soil; environment; pedo-transfer rules;

References: Blum, WEH, 1993. Soil Protection Concept of the Council of Europe and Integrated Soil Research. In Soil and Environment Vol 1, eds. HJP Eijsackers and T Hamers, pp37-47, Kluwer Academic Publisher, Dordrecht.