The City Beneath Our Feet
Students investigate the characteristics of soils, their role in role in urban environments and how soils can be preserved. They use their knowledge of the properties of soils to explore how to reduce flooding in cities.
Soils can be a good starting point to investigate ecosystems and biodiversity. Soils play a vital role in sustaining human welfare, agricultural productivity and environmental stability. The study of soil as a science has provided us with a basic understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological properties and processes essential to such a complex ecosystem.
Soil represents an essential and limited resource from which 95% of our food production is dependent and a home for living systems. Soils are increasingly under pressure from intensive agriculture resulting in reduced fertility, erosion and biodiversity loss; and if soil is unable to provide food for us?
But soils do not only provide food, they are part of ecosystems which provide ecosystem functions from flood prevention to carbon sequestration; vital in mitigating the climate crisis.